THE LEAST OF WHAT WE DO

by Pilar Saavedra-Vela

 

Vusala Yusifova and her daughter, Inji, asylum seekers from Azerbaijan, cutting a client’s hair in Monteverde, Costa Rica. Photograph by César Rodríguez.

 

Trump Deported Them. A Costa Rican Mountain Town Took Them In. —The New York Times, April 16, 2026
 

 

Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me. —Matthew 25:31-46
 
 

The cicadas have been silenced
by the chill of the oncoming night
 
On the highway, under a tree,
cardboard  is home  to a warm body
 
The cloud village of Monteverde
welcomes  deported families
 
from Russia and Azerbaijan who sought
asylum in America
 
One Russian witnessed  election cheating
another  man protested in Azerbaijan
 
Imagine being denied American
solidarity, shown instead a boot
 
all the way to  Costa Rican limbo
to find help among  the Quakers
 
Korean war objectors
who settled  a mountain top
 
The poet’s song has been silenced
 by the chill of the oncoming night
 
The tired, poor yearning masses
cradled by the foreigners as their own.


Pilar Saavedra-Vela is a student of poetry, painting, and acting, former editor and translator.  Born in Colombia, she grew up in the US  and now lives in Costa Rica. Pilar's poetry has been published in Passagers and The New Verse News.

ALL MY AUNTIES WERE THIRD WORLD WOMEN

by Vinay Krishnan

 

when you fly international, one of the TSA’s 

prohibited travel items is solidarity for the world’s 

oppressed. don’t put solidarity in your luggage. you 

can’t leave with that. you definitely can’t come home with 

that. at customs, we need an itemized list of any 

new truths you have in your bags that we’ve been 

hiding from you here in America. empty your 

pockets and prove to me you’re not carrying a 

trinket that connects you to another man’s struggle. 

take off your shoes and socks and place your 

brown feet on this white floor as a reminder. a 

reminder that every border crossing is a strip 

search and a cudgel, distilling you into something 

that fits more easily into an overhead compartment 

or a cage or a grave.

but today I had to laugh at that. because all my 

aunties were third world women. and now we're 

running it back, old and new blessings. all my 

aunties were third world women. all my aunties 

were third world women.

Vinay Krishnan is a writer and community organizer. His poetry has appeared in Cordite Poetry Review, his fiction has appeared in Barren Magazine, and his non-fiction has appeared in SLAM Magazine.

A WHISTLE AND A HONK FOR OUR CITIES UNDER SIEGE

by Raymond Nat Turner

 

 

 

 

Exploding eyeballs of children in chokeholds. Shivering 

seniors drug out into teen temperatures in their underwear;

bloody faces of body-slammed elders, face prints in snow.

Packs of 250lb. fantasy football bettors/NFL-wannabes pile on.

Invasion of the body snatchers! Deputized traitors / MAGAt 

magicians disappearing loved ones. Boss Tweet’s bounty hunters—

$50,000 bonuses — body-slamming, beating down, choking and

Redacting 1st , 4th,  14th and other amendments—on our dime!

Home doors busted open like piñatas by battering ram-wielding

thugs. Shards of car window glass shower city streets with freezing

chaos and terror. 

Another US city’s under siege. Will the reign of ICE stall in snow?

Burrito shop hungry hardhats flooded for lunch; 

for strategy sessions; for 30 minute escapes into

sports sections folded up in sturdy denim back 

pockets: EMPTY.

Coffee shop where co-workers; old and new

neighbors and welcome visitors gathered to chat

over cappuccino, chai, mocha, Americano; or sat

journaling or answering messages: EMPTY.

Corner church swollen with Sunday harmonies 

with communion; with fellowship: EMPTY.

Neighborhood school’s steady stream of shrieking drop-offs 

and pickups ground to sudden halt.

Clinic’s steady stream of cold and flu sufferers: are missing

in action. Community life is strangled under brownshirt siege.

Recalling “No Kings” rally ‘eons ago.’ Signs reading: NO WAR BUT 

CLASS WAR! Recalling contagious rage against grifting Judas. And

feeling hopeful as hell. Remembering solidarity’s our silver lining

in swastika infused clouds … almost filling battleship gray skies...

 

 

Raymond Nat Turner is a NYC poet; Black Agenda Report's Poet-in-Residence; and founder/co-leader of the jazz-poetry ensemble UpSurge!NYC.

TRUMP INAUGURAL

by Paul Hostovsky

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

The day Trump takes office

I’m quitting sugar

to protest the irreplaceable

place of sweetness in the dark

world. I mean look

around. The ice is melting into everything and the levels

of pain are rising worldwide with alarming

silence seeping into everything 

and there’s nothing

I can do about it. I need

to do something about it. I’m quitting

sugar as an act of solidarity, 

a way to keep the sweetness 

holy. Kind of like the sabbath, only

secular. Kind of like a hunger strike, only

healthier. Of course the symbolism

will be lost on Trump, whose own

blood sugar levels are a state 

secret—if it weren’t

lost on Trump he probably wouldn't

have won. Hell, he wouldn’t have 

run in the first place if he understood 

the irreplaceable, unimpeachable,

inexpressible place of sweetness 

in the dark world, which is growing 

darker and more bitter apace, 

and is just as irreplaceable as it ever was.

Paul Hostovsky’s poems have been featured on Poetry Daily, Verse Daily, The Writer’s Almanac, and Best of the Net. He has been published in Poetry, Passages North, Carolina Quarterly, Shenandoah, New Delta Review, Bellevue Literary Review, Atlanta Review, Poetry East, The Sun, and many other journals and anthologies. He has won a Pushcart Prize, the Comstock Review's Muriel Craft Bailey Award, the FutureCycle Poetry Book Prize, and chapbook contests from Grayson Books, Riverstone Press, Frank Cat Press, Split Oak Press, and Sport Literate. Paul has thirteen full-length collections of poetry, the most recent being Pitching for the Apostates (2023). He makes his living in Boston as a sign language interpreter. He lives with his wife Marlene in Medfield, Massachusetts.

I’VE SEEN THIS BEFORE

by Jerry Krajnak

David Shapiro, Who Gained Fame in Poetry and Protest, Dies at 77: A renowned member of the New York School of poets, he also found accidental notoriety when he was photographed during the 1968 uprising at Columbia University... Mr. Shapiro was just weeks from graduating when another student photographed him when the office of the university’s president, Grayson Kirk, in Low Library was occupied. Shown seated in a high-backed chair behind the administrator’s paper-strewn desk, Mr. Shapiro captured the spirit of a moment, casually smoking one of Mr. Kirk’s cigars while wearing sunglasses and a defiant smirk. —The New York Times, May 10, 2024

They locked us out of Schofield Hall,
police demanded we disperse,
warned us we disturbed the peace,
endangered safety, led us away;
 
meanwhile, eight thousand miles away,
bamboo huts were being torched,
buffaloes and chickens shot,
farmers’ daughters raped,
 
and military chiefs kept score
with their bloody body counts
repeated nightly on channel 13
before the local weather.
 
I slowly rock on a cabin porch,
a snoring dog at my feet,
listen as a mockingbird calls
from far across the pond.
 
Another responds, so near to us
that we both flinch, get up
and enter the cabin, turn on the news,
hear about Gaza, Ukraine.
 
We watch as New York tents get smashed,
see ziptied children led away.
I join them, rise with my gray hair
in solidarity.

Author’s Note: I was in college in Eau Claire, Wisconsin in 1968. The events were not as dramatic for us as they were for Columbia students either then or now, but they are all true. Also, I thank the spirit of Sylvia Plath for help with the penultimate line.

Jerry Krajnak is a Vietnam veteran who later survived forty years in public school classrooms. A Pushcart nominee, his recent work appears in The New Verse News, Autumn Sky Poetry, One Art, Star 82 Review, Rat's Ass Review, and other journals.

WHITE PAPER

by Alexis Krasilovsky

Photocollage by the poet.

Blank sheets of white paper were a symbol of defiance over the weekend as Chinese protesters braved likely prosecution to openly oppose the government's policy of zero tolerance for COVID and public dissent. —Newsweek, November 28, 2022.  China has rolled back its most severe Covid policies—including forcing people into quarantine camps—just a week after landmark protests against the strict controls. —BBC, December 7, 2022

the white hibiscus

moves in solidarity

with the protesters

who hoist white posters

of invisible slogans

perfumed with freedom.

Alexis Krasilovsky was born in Alaska, survived sexual assault at gunpoint, knows what it’s like to be completely deaf, and has traveled to over twenty countries. Educated at Yale and CalArts (MFA Film/Video), Krasilovsky is the author of “Watermelon Linguistics: New and Selected Poems” (Cyberwit – finalist, 2022 International Book Awards) and other books. Her award-winning poetry film, "The Parking Lot of Dreams" (2021) has screened in over a dozen festivals worldwide.

DER SHTEYN

by Donna Katzin

"Der Shteyn” in Yiddish means “the stone.” April 19, 2022 marked the 79th anniversary of the beginning of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, which lasted for 27 days, as Nazis launched their final liquidation of the largest Jewish ghetto in Nazi-occupied Europe. 7,000 Jews died. News of the uprising spread quickly, giving hope and strength to others struggling to survive and resist. Each year on this date, the survivor community and friends gather at the stone—a memorial marker in New York City’s Riverside Park—to honor the fighters and the fallen, commemorate the uprising, and inspire resistance to the fascist, racist and other oppressive forces of our own times.

On our lapels,

we pin paper daffodils—

yellow like stars.

 

 

Together we revisit the stone

asleep in silence, scarcely seen,

through summer, autumn, winter,

waiting by the unwavering river

that warms to an uncertain sun

as wind holds back its tears.

 

 

Our grey heads bow,

as we receive the letters

from London and Melbourne,

words of solidarity from Warsaw

somehow still shrouded

in smoke and ash.

 

 

This year we honor women

couriers who carried messages

and money in their inner garments,

revolvers in their handbags, passed

with borrowed accents between ghettos,

harbored hope, smuggled life.

 

 

Our lips recite

the Hymn of the Partisans

in a language I have forgotten,

as we place blossoms on the stone,

listen for the voices that will rise

as long as we remember.

Donna Katzin is the former and founding executive director of Shared Interest, a fund that mobilizes the human and financial resources of low-income communities of color in South and Southern Africa.  A board member of Community Change in the U.S., and co-coordinator of Tipitapa Partners working in Nicaragua, she has written extensively about South Africa, community development and impact investing.  Published in journals and sites including The New Verse News and The Mom Egg, she is the author of With the Hands, a book of poems and photographs about post-apartheid South Africa’s process of giving birth to itself.

WRESTLED

by Sister Lou Ella Hickman, I.W.B.S.

Open palms by Pasqi

"If violence isn’t the way to end racism in America, then what is?” 

—Arwa Mahdawi, The Guardian, May 30, 2020               

i wrestled for days to discover
the one   right   thing
one answer to help heal
our nation’s white wound of privilege
what i learned in that starkness
was the anguished lesson
of my own poverty
that is   to sit in the stillness of solidarity
knowing there is no one right answer
save in the empty begging bowl
of the open palms of my hands
which i will fill
each night with my tears

Sister Lou Ella is a former teacher and librarian. Her poems have appeared in numerous magazines such as America, First Things, Emmanuel, Third Wednesday, and TheNewVerse.News as well as in four anthologies: The Night’s Magician: Poems about the Moon, edited by Philip Kolin and Sue Brannan Walker, Down to the Dark River edited by Philip Kolin, Secrets edited by Sue Brannan Walker, and After Shocks: The Poetry of Recovery for Life-Shattering Events edited by Tom Lombardo. She was nominated for the Pushcart Prize in 2017. Her first book of poetry entitled she: robed and wordless was published in 2015. (Press 53.)

HOLOCAUST TRAIN

a poem found in the words of Janina Iwanska

by Howie Good

Janina Iwanska, 89, is photographed in her Warsaw apartment. She was sent to Auschwitz after she was separated from her parents at the age of 14 during the Warsaw Uprising in 1944 when the Nazis laid siege to the city. She arrived at the death camp at the height of its exterminations, when the SS guards killed 330,000 people in a span of eight weeks. —Rob Schmitz/NPR, January 27, 2020

We were put into open train cars
and huddled together to keep warm.

When it snowed, we collected it
to drink, because they didn't give us

water. We were in such complete
solidarity that when one of us fell

asleep standing (there was no room
to sit or lie down) none of the others

would steal the snow that accumulated
on her. That snow belonged to her.

Howie Good is the author most recently of Stick Figure Opera: 99 100-word Prose Poems from Cajun Mutt Press. He co-edits the online journals Unbroken and UnLost.

ON THE AMAZON FIRES

by Sister Lou Ella Hickman

As the Amazon burned and the world faced an ecological disaster, President Emmanuel Macron of France bluntly criticized Brazil’s leader this week and threatened to kill a major trade deal between Europe and Brazil. President Trump, on the other hand, posted a tweet only Friday evening, saying that the United States was ready to help contain the fires, but adding that “future trade prospects” between the United States and Brazil “are very exciting.” Photo: Under increasing international pressure to contain fires sweeping parts of the Amazon, President Jair Bolsonaro of Brazil on Friday authorized use of the military to battle the massive blazes. Credit:Leo Correa/Associated Press via The New York Times, August 24, 2019

                                i

                        my arms  scorched
                        with solidarity’s fire
                        ask   is this the world’s misplaced rage  
                                             or
                                                        is there some unknown  unseen  monster
                                             that feeds on our anger, fear, and hate
                                             that spews back flames
                                             to consume the earth's primal green breathing

                                                     ii

                                            the media question blares
                                            what can you do to help
                                            let your skin also burn
                                            with solidarity’s fire


Author’s note: I had a severe psoriasis flareup that began approximately the same time the Amazon fires began.


Sister Lou Ella Hickman, I.W.B.S. is a former teacher and librarian. She is a certified spiritual director as well as a poet and writer.  Her poems have appeared in numerous magazines such as America, First Things, Emmanuel, Third Wednesday, and TheNewVerse.News as well as in the anthologies The Night’s Magician: Poems about the Moon edited by Philip Kolin and Sue Brannnan Walker, Down to the Dark River edited by Philip Kolin, Secrets edited by Sue Brannan Walker, and After Shocks: The Poetry of Recover for Life-Shattering Events edited by Tom Lombardo. She was nominated for the Pushcart Prize in 2017. Her first book of poetry entitled she: robed and wordless was published by Press 53 in 2015.

WOMEN'S WAVE 2019

by Donna Katzin

A contingent of Jewish women and supporters march to Freedom Plaza in Washington on Saturday. (Evelyn Hockstein for The Washington Post, January 19, 2019)

In the shadow of the Thurgood Marshall Court House,
above the African Burial Ground,
we come from our own Egypts
our Red Seas, deserts of despair,
wildernesses of silence.

Rivers from centuries and continents
some resplendent, some reluctant,
converge, water this wave.

As the rally wakes to Aretha’s reveille—
Respect—the youngest demonstrator,
on her mother’s shoulders,
thrusts her tiny fist
over the shivering crowd.        

A black bearded brother in a pink pussy hat
snaps bare fingers, bobs to refrains
of Sweet Honey in the Rock.

And from the Italian contingent –
Ravioli, ravioli,
Give me my birth controli!

In kente cloth, a grandmother from Nigeria
waves her sign: Human rights
don’t stop at the border.

Our parka-ed multi-colored bodies—
gay, straight, trans—sway
to the Resistance Revival Chorus,
do not feel the cold.

Millenials contemplate the question:
Ever wonder what you would have done during slavery,
the holocaust, civil rights?
You’re doing it right now!

Together we remember those who march with us:
Sandra Bland, Mother Jones, Dolores Huerta,
Ethel Rosenberg, Fanny Lou Hamer,
who taught us: Solidarity is
not a spectator sport.

Rise up, Sisters.
Democracy is a dance.
Our movement is a wave.
We are a revolution.

It’s our damn turn.


Donna Katzin is the founding executive director of Shared Interest, a fund that mobilizes the human and financial resources of low-income communities of color in South and Southern Africa. A board member of Community Change in the U.S., and co-coordinator of Tipitapa Partners working in Nicaragua, she has written extensively about South Africa, community development and impact investing. Published in journals and sites including TheNewVerse.News and The Mom Egg, she is the author of With the Hands, a book of poems and photographs about post-apartheid South Africa’s process of giving birth to itself.

SOLIDARITY’S QUESTION

by Sister Lou Ella Hickman




solidarity’s question: who will embrace such present sorrow    
               I am only one, but still I am one . . . but I can do something.
                         —Edward Everett Hale, "Lend a Hand"


                                i sit here
                                alone in the chapel
                                a dark desert night
                                                Jesus, have mercy on me a great sinner
                                i breathe in   then out
                                                Jesus, have mercy on us
                                i breathe  slower
                                                Jesus, have mercy on me a great sinner
                                slower    into   the   dark
                                                Jesus, have mercy on us
                                the clock chimes the quarter hour
                                                Jesus, have mercy on me a great sinner
                                i sit before All Hunger, Thirst and Longing
                                   to plead   in the silence    for grace among the violences
                                                Jesus, have mercy

Sister Lou Ella Hickman, a member of the Sisters of the Incarnate Word and Blessed Sacrament, has been a teacher on all levels including college, and she has worked in two libraries.  Presently, she is a freelance writer as well as a certified spiritual director. Her poems and articles have been published in numerous magazines as well as in After Shocks: Poetry of Recovery for Life-Shattering Events edited by Tom Lombardo and in Down to the Dark River and The Southern Quarterly both edited by Philp Kolin. She and Pam Edwards co-authored Catechizing with Liturgical Symbols. Her first book of poetry, she: robed and wordless, published by Press 53, was released in the fall of 2015.

A MIGHTY WOMAN WITH A TORCH

by Donna Barkman

MADISON, WI (WKOW August 27, 2013) -- Capitol Police have been arresting the Solidarity Singers for gathering without a permit since late July.  But for the first time on Monday, those arrests turned violent.

Lady Liberty on Lake Mendota.

They forced me to my knees—the censors
and the haters of your speech, no longer free.
The cost of congregating: a strong fence
and the punishment for protest songs, a fee
or jail time— length to be decided.
My mouth is gagged, I gasp for breath
since they wrapped me, thickly iced,
strait-jacketed, to await my death.
But my tablet bears the law of freedom—
still!—and dated Independence Day,
so legislators are forewarned we’ll come
to march and sing, and have our say.
Imprisoned lightning – my torch – will thaw
our frozen rights:  reclaim our law!

          
Author's note: Text in italics from "The New Colossus" (1883) by Emma Lazarus, engraved on The Statue of Liberty.

Donna Barkman lived in Madison in the 70s and watched Miss Liberty on ice from her office window in Helen C. White Hall.  Since then, she continued as a librarian and added the job titles of performer, writer and teacher.

SINGING TRUTH TO POWER ON THE CAPITOL TOUR, MADISON, WISCONSIN, 8-7-13

by Wendy Vardaman





 for the Solidarity Sing Along & Overpass Light Brigade, Living Art Since 2011 & the Raging Grannies, est. 2003


Liberty’s decked
in a dozen shades of green, wears a laurel-leafed
red cap,
shelters a ballot box in her lap,
inside it a white ball—that means yes.
Old as Moses, Legislation has
a notebook, a pen, could be a writer. Or just a forgetful old man.
Justice, maybe Liberty’s mom,
holds a pan in each palm. And Governance?
He’s up to something. Has his eye on Liberty’s
egg-like vote. He’s Roman.
Carries the Emperor’s wand
in one hand and a sword in the other. Flashes his shining, glass-light teeth
like he means it. The red breastplate means he hangs with Mars, even if he hides the helmet

under his seat. The four
sit larger than life, myth-like, on benches flat to the wall, don’t register
the noon-hour sing-along, from their Olympus high. One hundred, more or less, 
not an organization, but a collection
of citizens, some regulars, some once-in-a-whiles, some one
timers, gather to gather citations beneath Resources of Wisconsin,
then lay them at her feet, along with their breath, the light
that bounces off some 100,000 Beaux-Art mosaic tiles
that make up Liberty, Legislation, Justice, Governance,
and raise a collective voice, assembled from fragments,
beneath the Rotunda, city center to which all have claim. Today some audience,
also part of this unlawful gathering, wears etched orange vests:
Tourists. Do Not Arrest. They ask, We’re from New York.
Is it true we’re not allowed to look?

The Raging Grannies sing in calico aprons and dahlia-trimmed, wide-brimmed hats.
Veterans for Peace, visiting this week, comes to sing and fly a flag.
Have you been to jail for justice? The Capitol Police tell
people who only stand and watch leave: Tell
a teenaged boy leave. Tell the orange-vested grandparents leave.
Tell a mom and her three children leave.
They say we all must clear the viewing area, an unlawful
assembly. But what if we’re quiet as stone, still as marble,
see-through as glass? They gather their offering to Liberty, Legislation,
Justice and Governance, arrest 20-some singers again
today: old people, clergy, veterans, teenagers,
students, mothers with children, photographers.
Just doing their job. An older woman wearing a tie-died  shirt lies down
on the granite floor to do hers. When

the singing ends, so do the arrests, though people still stay to talk in the Capitol
full-up with art: murals and sculptures, marble and glass. Including “The Trial
of Chief Oshkosh.” Including “The Opening of the Panama Canal.” Including
“Wisconsin,” the hollow, gold-leafed woman in a long,
Empire-style dress at the very top of the dome, who wears a hat
with a badger, another state symbol, perched
on top of it: commission given to, then stolen
from, an actual Wisconsin woman,
Helen Farnsworth Mears.
The Capitol tour covers rocks and fossils: Nautiloid, Gastropod, Burrows,
Coral, Ammonoid, Bryozoans, Brachiopods, sedentary animals
of the ancient sea floor. Covers 19th century New York. Covers artistic time capsules.
Governance, also sedentary, likes it that way. Bullies Justice, who
keeps her mouth shut. Ignores an old journalist taking notes. Leers at Liberty.


Wendy Vardaman is the author of Obstructed View (Fireweed Press), co-editor/webmaster of Verse Wisconsin, and co-founder/co-editor of Cowfeather Press. She is one of Madison, Wisconsin's two Poets Laureate (2012-2015).