FUTILITY AND NEED

by Steve Bowman

AI-generated graphic by NightCafé for The New Verse News.

I don’t have the courage of my friends

to post in protest of this tyrannical regime.

All day every day they’re writing

trump this trump that

all over social media. I tell myself

what’s the point?

A random post here and there

won’t change anything

it’s just a waste of time.

 

Truth is I’m scared.

Of who will respond.

Of not knowing enough to argue.

Of being shamed into silence again.

Of losing.

 

Maybe winning isn’t the point.

Maybe getting up the nerve is enough.

To say what’s wrong is wrong.

To show it’s possible to tell the truth.

To help others find their voice.

To speak with hope.

Steve Bowman’s work has appeared in multiple publications, including Last Leaves, Keeping the Flame Alive, Poets in the Pines, Mocking Owl Roost, Purple Aardvark, and Heart of Flesh. When not writing, Steve seeks inspiration with his little dog, Grummle, in the hills and leaves of Southern Indiana.

THERE ARE MONSTERS UNDER MY BED

by Celeste DeSario

AI-generated graphic by Shutterstock for The New Verse News.

I jolt awake wondering…
Where do the monsters go at night?
Are they hiding in the shadows?
In my closet? Under my bed?
My curtains, tightly drawn—I’m safe.
But… are the monsters still out there?
Lurking? Waiting? 
Or are they only in my head?
 
Biding their time,
They will creep into the hamlets, villages, towns, cities, 
Seducing men cloaked in blue, gray, brown uniforms, wearing badges, pointing guns.
 Masked. 
 For whose protection? 
Social Media, politicians, distort the truth even as visuals show us snippets of reality,
And now, AI, distorts images using Deep Fakes, making decisions based on values not aligned with ours, well, with values we once held respected, agreed upon. 
Is AI listening to our conversations, recording our fears, sharing them…with? 
We don’t know. That’s why we should worry.
 
Those monsters creep into Judicial chambers,
Where we assign fancy Latin terms, 
Like Mala Fide—acting in bad faith,
Or Proper ex Parte Communication—Defying justice, the court’s authority and dignity.
Tearing down our laws, 
And everything that carefully glues our country together.
Makes us free.
Makes us proud.
Makes us a republic we love.
 
Scenes crafted in sick, twisted minds play out in our towns, on our screens, 
Eventually, in our backyards.
Maybe even our living rooms.
Who is roaming the hallways of our colleges?
Our libraries?
Places we once found refuge for serious thought,
Contemplating futures we understood. 
 
Okay, now you are just listing. Stop being so dramatic.
You are scaring me.
 
Look carefully. The monsters have infiltrated our schools.
They need to get those kids,
Need to inject them with bigotry and hate.
Remember the song, “You’ve got to be carefully taught.”
So, they teach them. 
Yanking books off the shelves that instill dangerous, harmful ideas.
Like tolerance, inclusion, acceptance,
Twisting words and history,
Until we don’t recognize who we once were.
Using Doublespeak, Political euphemisms.
“I am the greatest peacekeeper in the history of the world.”
(Yes, bomb those fishing boats and those on them,
Demonize any country that doesn’t agree with me,
Detain citizens. Call them illegal. I don’t care.
Just do it. 
I’ll keep dancing to distract them. Make them laugh. Make them love me.)
 
They know spectacle distracts us, so,
They organize marches.
Political parades.
Use pennants, colorful flags, music,
Precision marching, a lot of saluting.
Film your leaders from below so they appear all -powerful,
So, they dominate the frame,
And then dominate what lies beyond the frame.
They appear…unstoppable.
But it’s just a trick. A low camera angle. We all know how that works.
See? We can stop them anytime we choose.
 So, do we choose now?
Choose now. 
Now.
I will fill up a cart from Amazon: that will save me.
Click. Sleep mask.  Click. Noise cancelling headphones. Air purifier. Click, click, click.
 
I will upload a new photo on my Instagram page.
See? 
Everything is okay. 
There is Nala the Cat,
Wearing a Superman Cape, and a gold crown.
Doug the Pug wearing funny sunglasses and a hat and a Christmas sweater.
 
Maybe TikTok can save me?
Just upload a new video.
Zach King, we need some of your digital magic,
Your sleight-of-hand.
That’s how it starts. That is also how it ends.
 
When you ask if there are monsters under the bed,
I assure you,
They do exist.
And when they crawl out,
There is little we can do to get them back under.
Except recognize them.
And it starts with that.
It simply starts with that. 

 
Celeste DeSario is an award-winning educator and former tenured professor of Literature and Writing at Suffolk County Community College. She is the recipient of the SUNY Chancellor’s Award for Teaching Excellence and a National Teaching Excellence Award from the University of Texas. After years of teaching the greats, she has stepped out of the classroom to craft her own worlds of impossible choices.

JUDGEMENT

by Judy Salcewicz

Mariano Barbacid, who leads the Experimental Oncology Group at the Spanish National Cancer Research Centre (CNIO), developed a treatment that has successfully and completely eradicated pancreatic tumours in mice, without any major side effects. The discovery was hailed as a potentially significant turning point in the fight against this disease. However, a segment of social media users mocked a birthmark on Barbacid's face and made numerous offensive and superficial comments, rather than recognizing the scientific achievement. —Money Control, January 31, 2026

Is it because we’re reading fewer books

that we forget not to judge them by their covers?

A disparagement, a quick dismissal

and we miss out on adventure, insight,

inspiration, knowledge, heroes to emulate,

and so many things that improve our lives.

Pancreatic cancer is a deadly disease--

with a five-year survival rate is 13%

Dr. Mariano Barbacid,

a Spanish cancer scientist,

and his team found a triple-drug therapy

that eliminates pancreatic tumors in mice.

This remarkable discovery is cause for

celebration and hope that it will lead

to a human cure.

Instead of celebrating, many online disparagers,

focus instead on the Doctor’s birthmark.

Judy Salcewicz is a New Jersey poet and writer who believes in the power of words.

THE FIRST LETTER OF PAUL TO THE CHURCH OF [NAME WITHHELD ON ADVICE OF COUNSEL]

by Matthew E. Henry (MEH)

from Paul—a prisoner to the gospel of God—to all those 

across the Eastern Ocean who have named themselves 

after Christ, consider themselves His most holy people. 

 

doubtless you have heard of the bonds of our brother, 

Pastor Daniel Fuentes Espinal who, born in Honduras, 

heeded God’s call to minster among you in Maryland 

for over a decade. heard how he was stalked and taken 

into the unholy hands of masked men on the road between 

Lowes’ and McDonald’s. was shackled into the belly 

of their beast, but preached the fruits of repentance—his hope

of their finding forgiveness in Jesus—to his captors 

from his car to the cell they anonymously threw him in.

 

when such reached my ear, my spirit was greatly troubled, 

but I took comfort assured that you—his siblings in Christ—

were firmly knit in condemning such actions, tied in the unity

of securing his release from imprisonments worse than mine. 

that no disagreements could cut the knot of our fellowship. 

I was astonished to hear some among you have raised your voice

against our brother on social media, confident in the baffling belief 

our refugee Savior—who fled Judea for Egypt—would stand 

within the invisible lines you’ve drawn about both His kingdoms.

 

given all we hold holy, how in the Hell—you so vehemently 

sentence others to—have you allowed Phillip Doug to say 

our brother “is not a victim if he is in our country illegally”? or 

tolerate Todd James—a supposed minister of the Grace 

of God—claims that “Christians who have illegal paperwork 

are getting sent back to their country so they can preach the gospel

and lay their life down like the apostles did”? Miller Tonee rejoices 

that people in his congregation are self-deporting. Herb Jimzel—

whose bio proclaims he spreads God's love to orphans, the poor, 

and to those with no hope—says his family came here legally—

in all caps, with three exclamation points—sees no contradiction 

between our brother’s treatment and “the word of God.” Shawn Dale

says pastor Espinal should be glad he wasn’t shot. 

 

though I once warned the Philippians to beware the devious bitches 

in their midst and wished botched circumcisions to scar my detractors 

in Galatia, I’m uncharacteristically at a loss for words to address 

those reprobate minds who forget our brother’s skin looks more like 

our shared Savior’s than what they feign. fiery indignation scalds

my tongue to near-silence least I scandalize those of you who allow 

such slander to continue. 

 

hear the word of the LORD, set your house in order. God is faithful—

He will see to His servant, but will also remember and repay all you

have and not done, especially to those within the household of faith.

Editor’s note: This poem includes actual quotations found on social media in response to the story of Pastor Daniel, but the names of the authors of those quotations have been changed… on advice of counsel as well.

Author’s note: You can help free Pastor Daniel Fuentes Espinal by supporting his GoFundMe.

Matthew E. Henry (MEH) is the author of six poetry collections, most recently said the Frog to the scorpion. He is an educator and editor who received his MFA yet continued to spend money he didn’t have completing an MA in theology and a PhD in education. He writes about education, race, religion, and burning oppressive systems to the ground at www.MEHPoeting.com

SUBJUNCTIVE

by Adrienne Pilon

Source: American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee at Instagram

If I write we are going to the sea if I write
shall be free if I write Palestine if I write 
protest or encampment or salaam
my brother if I write Allah if I write 
genocide if I write bombing or Gaza  
or Hamas if I write Zionist if I write
apartheid or war crimes if I write 
nearly 50,000 dead or children are dying
or ceasefire now these words may 
rise up from the text, flagged and marked 
by a force that gives no quarter 
to what it does not care to understand.
The ink of my pen draws a target 
on my back on the back of my mother 
my father my wife my husband 
my daughter my son my sister 
my brother salaam my brother 
salaam salaam salaam salaam

Adrienne Pilon is a writer, educator, and activist. Recent and forthcoming work appears in The Tiger Moth Review; Room; Tendon Magazine and elsewhere.

FORCED REALITY

by Lylanne Musselman 

The morning Facebook went down,

is a testament to the world we live in,

your first thoughts: someone hacked me—

your account is gone, the photos you trust

will always be there forever, deleted.

A life lived on social media, Instagram and

Threads vanished. You're not allowed to log in.

Wrong password. You know it’s correct,

but conditioned you change your password.

The platforms won’t let you. You’ve been shut out.

Meta doesn’t believe it’s you. How do you prove

you’re you to software programs that don’t

recognize passwords, or codes sent

directly to your phone to verify your identity?

Finally, you hear others are having issues

logging into Facebook and all related platforms.

Your next thought—we’re under attack.

Some nefarious group or country has taken control—

then like a miracle, we’re allowed back in.

It’s as if nothing happened at all, no real harm.

Except how pathetic we are

when we collectively have a panic attack

over social media, forcing us to face reality—

we rely too much on Meta to connect.

Lylanne Musselman is an award-winning poet, playwright, and visual artist. Her work has appeared in Tipton Poetry Journal, The New Verse News, Poetry Breakfast, and The Ekphrastic Review, among many others, in addition to many anthologies. Her seventh chapbook Staring Dementia in the Face (Finishing Line Press) became available in 2023.

ANOTHER FALSE NARRATIVE

by Catherine Gonick

Wojciech Kossak "Cossack on Horseback", 1918, watercolour on paper, 24 x 14.5 cm

My Cossacks just left, taking with them

everything they could carry.

As usual, my books, notebooks,

my rubber crutch. I can’t even climb

the walls. But deep in my closet,

a locust swarm gathers. I ride it

back to the desert, scan for signs,

a dung-beetle track, ripple of sand,

to find an oasis of laughing doves.

 

Scribbling again has meaning, yet certain

as ink on paper, as bullies’ lies

on social media, these scimitared

thugs will return. In a garden

of sunflowers outside Odessa, my aunt

fell in love with one of the Cossacks

on horseback passing her house.

 

She was only a child, but her story

reminds me not to be fooled

if now and then, they are handsome.

A pogrom against words is still a pogrom.

 

Catherine Gonick’s poetry has appeared in publications including Beltway Poetry Quarterly, Notre Dame Review, Forge, and Sukoon, and in anthologies including in plein air, Grabbed, and Dead of Winter 2021.  She is part of a company that fights  global warming through climate repair and restoration projects around the world. Pogroms early in the last century drove her grandparents and their first two children from Odessa to California, where her aunt painted sunflowers and worked in the San Francisco Public Library, and her uncle was a leader in the Longshoremen's Strike of 1933 and a lifelong activist. 

SOCIAL MEDIA IN THE MOMENTS AFTER THE DEREK CHAUVIN VERDICT

a found poem

by Dick Westheimer

White folks in my feed: Thank God!

Black folks in my feed... 

White folks responding to white folks in my feed: Amen!

Black folks in my feed... 

White folks in my feed: Boom!

YES, YES, YES!!!!! Justice, sweet Justice!

A perfect trifecta...GUILTY, GUILTY, GUILTY.

Justice served. Black Lives Matter. Accountability today. 

A black death mattered. 

GUILTY GUILTY GUILTY ❤️❤️❤️

Black folks in my feed:

George Floyd is still gone.

God rest your soul, George Floyd.

Each day that I worry I will be next 

is another day 

without justice.

If there hadn’t been a video, 

there’d never have been a trial.

Time to organize our strength 

into power.

DO NOT forget 

the other three cops! They let it happen!

A white woman in my feed:

What a relief justice was served!

A Black woman in my feed posts a snapshot:

George Floyd holding his daughter Gianna. 

Black women in my feed: 

Thank God for Darnella Frazier. 

Keep ALL the witnesses in your prayers. 

All of them.

I exhaled...and as soon as I did, 

I started sobbing. This is what it’s like 

to be Black in America.

This! Darnella! A Black girl...now a Black Woman. 

I am thankful for you!

White folks in my feed: 

Justice. Guilty x 3!! We can all breathe!!!

Black men in my feed:  I  still  can’t  breathe.

For over 40 years, Dick Westheimer has—in the company of his wife Debbie—lived, gardened and raised five children, on their plot of land in the rural US in Clermont County, Ohio. He recently has taken up with poets and the writing of poetry to make sense of the world. His poems have appeared in Rattle, Pine Mountain Sand and Gravel, Riparian Anthology, and The New Verse News, among others.

FACEBOOK FOLLY

by Casey Aimer

Stop Hate For Profit

i am slowly destroying my social media.

manually for hours, months, deleting
individual likes, comments, memories.

i believed if my life was not shared
existence would be the tree no one heard.
i wrote to take that wood and give it voice.

this deleting myself—call it revolution.

we chambered our own minds
letting them echo in petri dishes.
placing past and present inside
digital safes for our future
we offered that up too.

i kept my sites so long
knowing memory lapses but
i’d rather forget than be paraded

this is me redrawing.


Editor's Note: The editor recognizes his hypocrisy in arguing and lobbying against Facebook even while TheNewVerse.News maintains a Facebook page. But he hopes the Facebook voice of TheNewVerse.News remains virtuous and valuable. Contrary opinions are welcome... at our Facebook page.

Casey Aimer holds an MFA in poetry from Texas State and a bachelor’s in prose from Texas A&M University. He was born and raised in Central Texas, and advocates for honest questions expressed in unconventional styles. A devoted anarchist, he hopes to escape the United States soon.

AS SMALL AS A PIMPLE

by Dmitry Blizniuk 

translated by Sergey Gerasimov from the Russian

Stop Hate for Profit

There's no room in history for a wanderer with a backpack,

or a cobbler in a circle of splinter light,

or a girl with a walking stick.

There is nothing human in the history of humans.

We examine and study all forms and kinds of war monsters,

detective or horror stories.

History is emptied out pools of time:

people's blood and stupidity of rulers have flowed out,

and only dry mud is left,

senseless, enameled emptiness,

and pyramids, burial mounds of years and dates.

But now we see our reflection in the Internet,

colorful shadows of asses and faces in social networking sites.

A greenish sick salmon 

sluggishly slaps its tail in the dirty water

among oil spills, candy wrappers,

and all kinds of garbage.

Looking at the gasoline stain on water

you can see your reflected face—

and you are as small as a pimple.

Dmitry Blizniuk is an author from Ukraine. His most recent poems have appeared in Poet Lore, The Pinch, Salamander, Willow Springs, Grub Street, and many others. A Pushcart Prize nominee, he is also the author of The Red Fоrest (Fowlpox Press, 2018). He lives in Kharkov, Ukraine. Member of PEN America.

WHERE THE MUSE LIES HIDDEN

by Michael Hogan

The taste of chocolate is cloying; the odor of burnt coffee clings to the kitchen.
The dog has given up for the day and lies sprawled against the tiles.
Netflix no longer beckons; you cannot bear another second-rate novel
or even “literature” which somehow today seems pretentious.
The garden planted, the house clean, dog fed and sleeping.
Exercise? Mindfulness? Facebook? emails?
Check, check, check, and CHECK!
And now here comes Boredom!
Like a dark nimbus cloud on a late afternoon
when the air is still as a vacuum
and you cannot divorce yourself from Self
It comes like a flood of viscosity, like mental syrup
clogging all the synapses with its oleaginous tentacles
signaling, I am here to stay, and you will be terribly unhappy
all the anchors of your sanity will disappear, and you will be adrift and bewildered
on a dreamlike sea, still awake but helpless.

There will be no thunderclap of relief in the stifling afternoon
no flash of lightning.
Just this
a slight urge to pick up a pen, a brush, an instrument
to write or paint or strike a chord.
And this is how the world begins again
how the light finds the trees and sparkles on the river
and a sudden shower lacquers the rose petals
and you create the world again.

Ignore it, and something dies, and something else will never be born.

Michael Hogan is the author of twenty-six books including the Irish Soldiers of Mexico which was the basis for an MGM film starring Tom Berenger and three documentaries. His work has appeared in numerous journals including The Paris Review, The Harvard Review, The Ohio Review, American Poetry Review, the Agni Review, New Letters, and others.  He currently lives in Guadalajara, Mexico with the textile artist Lucinda Mayo and their Dutch Shepherd, Lola.

BEFORE CORONA, THE CORONA

by Charles Harvey

Junkyard Find: 1968 Toyota Corona

Before the Corona
Was a virus, it was a car,
Carrying us like
The wind to Woodstock,
Berkeley, Kent State,
Selma, Detroit, Watts—
All them hotspots.

Six of us piled in.
Inches apart was a luxury.
We didn’t give a duck,
Coziness roused our hormones
And made us want to fuck.
Our long hair tangled in the seats.
Our ‘fros flattened and sweated
To the rhythm of soul beats.

Before the Corona
Was a virus, it was a car,
Traveling all around the world
Spawning revolutions,
Liberal ideologies,
And X-gen babies.

Before the Corona was a virus
Before T***p was a virus
Before social media was a virus
Before Fox News was a virus
Before the Republican Party was a virus
The Corona was a car, baby!

Charles Harvey is a native Houstonian. His work has appeared on TheNewVerse.News over the years. He recently published Rough Cut Until I Bleed. 

BREATHLESS

by Ann E. Wallace

I have spent these slow motion
weeks watching the world scramble
and panic through the 8 square inch surface
of my phone, cupped in the palm of my hand.

I hold these 8 square inches in the palm
of my hand, attached to my body
confined to the fifteen square feet
of my couch, or my queen size bed

Up a flight of stairs I cannot walk
without gasping for the air flowing
through my 1800 square foot home,
in my city filled with 270,000 other souls

All gasping for air, and all I need
is enough to pump through my 5’2”
body, not too much, but I can see
on my screen that I am not alone

In my need, and I can see why, though
it all makes no sense, my small body
panting and blacking out on my red couch
inside my red house cannot get enough.

Ann E. Wallace is writing poetry and teaching her college classes from home in Jersey City, NJ while she and her daughter recover from COVID-19. Her poetry collection Counting by Sevens (2019) is available from Main Street Rag, and her published work can be found online at AnnWallacePhD.com. She is on Twitter @annwlace409.

SUBLIMINALITY

by Gary Glauber

More U.S. service members have been transported out of Iraq for medical treatment and evaluations following Iran’s missile attack on military facilities there, the Pentagon said Tuesday, nearly two weeks after President Trump and defense officials initially said no one was hurt. —The Washington Post, January 22, 2020. Photo: U.S. soldiers stand at a spot hit by Iranian missiles at Ain al-Asad air base in Iraq days after the Jan. 8 attack. (Qassim Abdul-Zahra/AP)

In those not-so-olden days,
they might kneecap you into submission
or try to shame you into changing your ways.

Today, the persuasion’s more subtle,
minds are changed without realizing
things encountered in media stream.

They float by like invisible balloons,
banners that point the way with
bold exclamations you’ll never remember.

Alone in the voting booth,
just you and your conscience
and inexplicable urges compelling you.

Foreign powers are acting poorly,
proving psycho-statistical truths,
gaining control from within.

Reading a mind isn’t necessary
when subtle control is relinquished
and a shocked world wonders

how nuclear winter has emerged
from within, not without,
fighting wars no one ever sees.

The new truth is contrived fiction.
Believers vehement with denial
conjure revisionist history,

spew touted party sound bites,
and daily break what others revered
on battlefields of public opinion.

This wall of boulders
grows larger over time
until no one quite remembers

or cares who it was
that cast the first stone
or the life we had before.

And we the unsure
in the chaos of uncertainty
fear the worst world war,

not knowing that bombs
of ultimate destruction
have already dropped.

Gary Glauber is a widely published poet, fiction writer, teacher, and former music journalist. He champions the underdog, and strives to survive modern life’s absurdities. He has two collections, Small Consolations (Aldrich Press) and Worth the Candle (Five Oaks Press), and a chapbook, Memory Marries Desire (Finishing Line Press).  A new chapbook of surreal poetry, The Covalence of Equanimity, a winner of the 2019 James Tate International Poetry Prize, is now available from SurVision Books.

52 LIES

by Julia Marsiglio

On social media I see the thunderous applause
for crushing bones under buildings
for bullets that close the eyes of children
forever—whose last words are unspoken
replaced with a cacophony of heavy
artillery, and the screams of mothers who hold them
under the rain of hellfire, and instead of running
count their eyelashes, one by one, and join
the dust, brought in rolling out from under tanks
manned by twitter fingered horsemen
who expected seas of sand but instead
colored the mountains with bright red blood.

The domes are imploding under 52 lies
all written by 45.
The explosions started at home—
on Facebook. Tic Toc. They don’t stop.
They are ours, but we don’t own them.
We watch them, like fireworks and we clap.
As flesh parts from flesh
mother from child
child from life—
we yawn
and we laugh.

Julia Marsiglio is a writer currently located in Montréal, Québec, who has been writing poetry and fiction since she was a child. She graduated with a Bachelor of Arts in Spanish language and literature from the University of Alberta in 2011. Her work has previously appeared in Montréal Writes.

A FOLLOWING

by David Feela

Cartoon from HubSpot at Mashable.

If you like me
I promise
to like you.
If enough of you
follow me
a social platform
will emerge
constructed of
digital timbers
sturdy enough
to hold the weight
of a million
similar minds.
We don’t have to be
indistinguishable,
so long as
you approve of
what I say.
I don’t know
where you live
or even have
the time to find out
but truth conforms
to no geography.
Let’s just say
it’s sufficient
that our thoughts
are linked. 
Connect me
with others
and we’ll grow
a constituency.
Like me.
We’ll be a multitude.


David Feela writes a monthly column for The Four Corners Free Press and for The Durango Telegraph. A poetry chapbook, Thought Experiments, won the Southwest Poet Series. His first full length poetry book The Home Atlas appeared in 2009. His new book of essays How Delicate These Arches released through Raven's Eye Press, has been chosen as a finalist for the Colorado Book Award.

IMPERATIVE ON FACEBOOK FROM NEIGHBOR WHOM I THOUGHT ONLY DISCUSSED THE WEATHER

Found Poem by Donna Hilbert

Really, Donna
Stick to art and poetry
Enough politics!
He’s the President
Get used to it!


Donna Hilbert is observing the collapse of free speech from Long Beach California.

COMMENCEMENT ADDRESS

by Devon Balwit

HONG KONG — Speaking at the University of Maryland, Yang Shuping, a graduating senior from China, sprinkled her upbeat commencement speech with observations that drew warm applause: The air was far cleaner in the United States than in China, she said, and she could openly discuss racism, sexism and politics in ways that she had never before dreamed possible. Growing up in China, “I was convinced that only authorities owned the narrative,” Ms. Yang, a theater and psychology major from the southern city of Kunming, told the crowd in a basketball arena in College Park, Md. “Only authorities could define the truth.” The speech on Sunday drew harsh criticism, however, from some of Ms. Yang’s Chinese classmates in Maryland and from legions of social media users in China, many of whom accused her of selling out her homeland. Even the city of Kunming weighed in, saying in a message on Weibo, China’s Twitter-like platform, that her comments about the city’s air pollution were “not related to us.” —The New York Times, May 23, 2017

“…we count the whale immortal in his species however perishable in his individuality.”
                                                                                                 —Herman Melville


You speak your truth, and you are blacklisted
or must flee a social media shit-storm, the hard

shoulders that knock you out of true as you pass by.
Someone, somewhere messes with your data. Perhaps

you will shut up, shocked that your opinions matter,
but in ways you didn’t expect. You realize that you

are dangerous, a drop that can coagulate with others,
a splash that can thicken to storm. Of course, they

want you silent, but you, my friend, are immortal
in your species, however perishable singly. Though

they make this day a sinkhole, take the long view:
the ones to come freer for your hacking at the vines.

Devon Balwit is a teacher/poet living in Portland, OR. She has four chapbooks—How the Blessed Travel (Maverick Duck Press), Forms Most Marvelous (forthcoming with dancing girl press), In Front of the Elements, and Where You Were Going Never Was (both forthcoming with Grey Borders Books). Some recent poems can be found in The Non-Binary Review, The Cincinnati Review, The Almagre Review, The Stillwater Review, The Tule Review, Red Earth Review, The Free State Review, Front Porch, Concis.

BUDDHA HAD IT EASY

by Michael Mark

The Bergin University of Canine Studies Puppy Cam

It was so much easier
to become enlightened then.

They didn’t have the
Puppy Cam to deal with.

Buddha could spend all day under
the Bodhi tree with no thought
of puppies wiggling and
tumbling.

So cute.

Puppies sleeping in piles.
Puppies waking up.
Puppies blindly crawling
over each other to get food.

Each move updated in
real time,
to your phone, iPad, laptop
right to your HDTV!

Puppies peeing.
Puppies’ eyes opening.
Puppies barking and
scaring themselves.
So cute.
Puppies being licked
clean by mom.

That’s how he was
able to concentrate with
such precision, for so long.

Cobras encircled Buddha.
Elephants charged him.
Mara sent his sexy daughters
to be his concubines.
He didn’t blink.

But Buddha didn’t have
the Puppy Cam.


Michael Mark is a hospice volunteer and long distance walker – his latest journey was the Camino De Santiago. His poetry has appeared or is set to appear in Angle Journal, Awakening Consciousness Magazine, Empty Mirror, Everyday Poets, Forge Journal, OutsideIn Magazine, Petrichor Review, San Diego Poetry Annual, Ray’s Road Review, Scapegoat Journal, Spillway, Red Booth Review, Red Paint Hill, Sleet Magazine, The Thing Itself, The New York Times, UPAYA, Word Soup End Hunger, Wayfarer and other nice places.