INDEPENDENCE DAY 250

by W. Luther Jett

Let there be no

celebration this time.

I will drape our Declaration

with sombre crepe—No flags

will line my avenues.

My music will not be beaten brass,

but the song of steel wheel

on steel rail—a wail high

as snow-locked peaks

in that place where the sun

lies down at last to rest.

Give me fireflies over fireworks.

Give me stars that refuse to fall.

Do not pray for me for I

am not your prey.

W. Luther Jett is a native of Montgomery County, Maryland and a retired special educator. His poetry has been published in numerous journals, as well as several anthologies. Luther is the author of six poetry chapbooks— his most recent is  The Colour Wars, (Kelsay Books, 2024). His full-length collection, Flying to America was released by Broadstone Books in 2024. Luther is the facilitator of a monthly virtual open mike sponsored by the Hyattstown Mill Arts Project in Hyattstown, Maryland. He also coordinates two monthly on-line poetry critique workshops. Luther is also a singer-songwriter who performs sporadically in wine-bars and cafes. He has released two singles and is in the process of recording an album of original material.

THE DYING BREATH

by Rose Mary Boehm

In a new image taken by the James Webb Space Telescope, the dying breaths of the star at the heart of the famous Helix Nebula are exposed in wonder and radiance. —Good News Network. Photo: NASA, January 20, 2026

 

"As above, so below," the famous aphorism by a mythical teacher and a mythical text. 

In the Emerald Tablet the ancients already knew about the relationship between the macrocosm and the microcosm. So, as a star dies and we see its dying breath pushing outward like a cloud of seeds to form new stars when their time has come, so the humble dandelion’s delicate umbrella-equipped seeds go with the wind to settle on another meadow and become new dandelions when their time has come, the spiders die soon after producing their egg sacs, and the spiderlings disperse into the world by ballooning: using the breeze and sometimes atmospheric electric fields to travel far, settling, mating, and laying egg sacs when their time has come.

 

"As above, so below"—instead of neurons sending electrical signals through axons, stars use magnetic field lines. Trees connect through the complex mycelia network, and we have more than 86 billion neurons in the brain, and a more or less equal number of other cells. Neurons and neurotransmitters are our mycelia. 

 

When my grandfather died, I saw a small silver cloud leaving his open mouth.

 
A German-born UK national, Rose Mary Boehm lives and works in Lima, Peru. Author of two novels, eight poetry collections and one chapbook, her work has been widely published mostly by US poetry journals. A new full-length poetry collection is forthcoming in 2026.

LIFE AT LAND’S END

by Mary Eileen Knoff

In January, for thirty years, I have left behind
grey Seattle skies to sit beside the Pacific shore
at Land’s End, on the Baja’s southern tip,
seeking respite from the northern chill.

Each year, thunderous surf lashes the land,
crashing against its standing stone, La Roca,
filling the sky with mist and foam.
This year the scene turns my thoughts toward home:

there an explosion of presidential orders
overwhelms like a deluge, threatening
to reshape truth as surf reshapes the sand.
Can our country withstand the onslaught thrust upon us?

Many of us now cast about for a course
to follow through these treacherous times.

Life at Land’s End calls out to me through the fog:

Stand firm like this rock, persist like the tide
shine like lighthouses for those who ride on stormy seas.
Your words and deeds of truth and mercy will be guides,
like bright, shining stars in a blackening sky,
like rafts of life on fear and greed’s wicked seas.

Mary Eileen Knoff spent the first two decades of her professional life as an English teacher, editor, and freelance writer. In the mid-1990s she studied for pastoral ministry and then served as a spiritual companion and small group facilitator since the early 2000s. She has lived in Redmond, Washington near the foothills of the Cascades for the last thirty years. For the last decade I have been crafting a collection of poems about life on the pond that I call Ponderings. I am in search for a publisher of that collection these days. In 2012, as part of a doctoral program in ministry, she collected, edited, and published writings by myself and others, now in a second edition, called Seasoning the Soul: Meditations for the Celtic Year.

WHEN OUR ROOKIE QUARTERBACK IS AS FAMOUS AS TOM BRADY, WILL THIS JANUARY 20 MATTER?

by T. R. Poulson

Caleb Williams [at the center of the above] photo received a series of phone calls Monday afternoon [on January 20, 2025] that elicited immediate emotion, followed by a sense of long-term clarity and anticipation. The Bears quarterback's phone rang while he was driving down the highway in Florida. President & CEO Kevin Warren, chairman George H. McCaskey, general manager Ryan Poles and special advisor to the President/CEO and chief administrative officer Ted Crews were on the line. Calling from Halas Hall, the group told the 2024 No. 1 overall pick that Ben Johnson would be the team's new head coach. —Chicago Bears, January 23, 2025

Stocks spike green today and hands hover on Bibles

while I think of football—do glorious days lie

ahead? Fans know something about faith and tribal

loyalty. Consider the Chicago Bears, the ways they

stumble. Fun fact: Caleb Williams, in his rookie

season, played nine straight games without a lazy

or dumb interception. Sometimes you have to look

hard to find stars. Still, faithful fans lit the stands

orange and blue. I dubbed Caleb unlucky

when he fell.  Fun fact: all nine games in that span

without a pick were losses. His line crumbled

around him while he darted among grasping hands.

You keep going, he said. Did he ever fumble

faith? Only a girl who still wears a Walter

Payton jersey would dream of seasons jumbled

with wins. Imagine! Our new head coach will alter

history, make Caleb a legend, make Soldier Field

great again, so great nothing else will matter. 

T. R. Poulson believes the best way to deal with a bully is to ignore him. She's a passionate Bears fan, and was excited about the hiring of Ben Johnson as head coach on inauguration day. Her work has previously appeared in The New Verse News and various publications, including Best New Poets, Gulf Coast, American Literary Review, and Booth.  She is currently seeking a publisher for her first manuscript, tentatively titled At Starvation Falls.

HEAT-STROKE

by David Chorlton

There’s a picture postcard sunrise
back of the apartments
at 48^th and Warner
and a fire truck in the parking lot. Smoke on the second storey,
three bodies, no clues, this neighborhood is zoned
for stillness in the afternoon. Water
for the sparrows, suet for the doves, a whole sky for the hawk
who flew through the yard this morning.
A hummingbird drinks light,
the sun drinks desert
and the desert drinks a hundred years
of silence in a single gulp.
 
*
Dustbathing quail in a hollow; eight half-grown
and one adult, each
with a tremble in its throat. Two flickers
on the tallest palm, a hundred
degrees high and climbing. 
Night on its way, the rabbits are out
to listen for darkness. Sure enough, it’s crossing
the ridge now, leaving nothing
but the bones of light behind. 2:20 a.m. reports
of swimming pool shots,
monsoon clouds arguing again, no arrests
are made.
 
*
An evening when homicide
hangs between the trees
and stops halfway along the path
to where a hawk’s nest is woven into the wind
the sky turns suddenly electric.
All the stars are flashing.
City lights behind the mountain,
Heaven’s rain falling
and thunder wipes the darkness clean.

David Chorlton has long been at home in Phoenix. He has a forthcoming book from The Bitter Oleander Press, Dreams the Stones Have, dedicated to the desert. 

BONE LIGHT

by Alejandro Escudé

What else could you collect with a sphere

Surrounding a star? In the era of artificiality

And commerce, would it be evidence

Of love? Would it leave a heat signature?

I picture an alien sphere—not metallic

As supposed, but translucent, amorphous,

Twinkling an arthritic light, a series of low-

Frequency whistles. Are there ripe stars

Where you are? Rhyming citadels, chariots

Like half-eaten strawberries? Scientists

Take the pulse of time, they inherit questions

And the questions give birth to universes.

But I wonder about such a powerful warmth

And the results of the search. Is energy

Stored in our marrow? The man himself

Said it would be more a collection of objects.

Like a home? Like most journeys, it might

Prove false evidence of wonder. A god

Unwanted. Light reflected off the bus stop

Bench of a galaxy. As of late, life’s become

A chain of human wrist bones, so we must

Look up and dream of a star-engine that’ll

Reveal the fluttering eyelids of another tribe

Mining the fumes of a celestial volcano.

Alejandro Escudé published his first full-length collection of poems My Earthbound Eye in September 2013. He holds a master’s degree in creative writing from UC Davis and teaches high school English. Originally from Argentina, Alejandro lives in Los Angeles with his wife and two children.

HEART OF THE GALAXY

by Alejandro Escudé

The mystery at the heart of the Milky Way has finally been solved. This morning, at simultaneous press conferences around the world, the astronomers of the Event Horizon Telescope (EHT) revealed the first image of Sagittarius A*, the supermassive black hole at the center of the Milky Way. It’s not the first picture of a black hole this collaboration has given us—that was the iconic image of M87*, which they revealed on April 10, 2019. But it’s the one they wanted most. Sagittarius A* is our own private supermassive black hole, the still point around which our galaxy revolves. —Scientific American, May 12, 2022.

It’s an engine, 

the scientists say,

a black Mustang

parked at the curb

in front of our house,

the Milky Way,

I’ve been there, 

lightless, eating up stars,

surrounded by fire

that cannot reach me,

speed of light,

the scientists say,

why the image is blurry

yet crisp

as can be,

such are the rules

we live by, the movie

inside the maelstrom,

the Papi

and the Mami,

a solitary mitt laying 

centerfield, a baseball 

tucked inside 

twirling 

as the cradle

of life in the universe spins 

26,000 light years away,

humans beings, Lucy

to the aliens, biological

Big Bang, Adam

and Eve to the bug-eyed

Greys

and the lizard man

who staggers out of an oval door

of a saucer-metallic

flying saucer,

time falling into time,

a spot on a boy’s foot,

beach tar, sound of waves,

salty air.

Alejandro Escudé published his first full-length collection of poems My Earthbound Eye in September 2013. He holds a master’s degree in creative writing from UC Davis and teaches high school English. Originally from Argentina, Alejandro lives in Los Angeles with his wife and two children.

THROUGH DESERT CLOUDS

by David Chorlton

An Ariane 5 rocket second stage deployed the James Webb Space Telescope shortly after launch on Dec. 25, 2021. It's 'humanity's last view' of the new observatory, says NASA PAO Rob Navias.

A cloud filled with shadow

floats up towards the gods

veiled in shades of cold

who look out from the mountain

and talk among themselves

about creation and energy

channeled to become this slender ridge

as the first step to infinity

and home for the coyotes

who come out every night to ask the stars

for guidance through the dark.

Word has it

 

from the hawks ascending

that a rocket has left the Earth

to go so far back in time

that all remaining to be seen

are the final ashes from

the cosmic dawn. What

a flash and what an echo

must have issued from the moment,

they reflect. And yet

 

not a single mockingbird

and no woodpeckers flew

from the crash. The day

is chilly but beautiful in how

the sheets of rain drift past

each other, and crossing

the peaks are the souls

the fates could never capture for themselves.

David Chorlton is a longtime resident of Phoenix, who continues writing, painting, and keeping track of the local bird life. His newest book is Unmapped Worlds, a collection of rehabilitated poems from his files of the past.

EVEN THE DOG

by Barbara Loots

Three family members whose bodies were found in the living room of a Glenaire house over the summer all died of natural causes possibly related to the untimely  death of the home caretaker… The family dog was also found dead next to a toilet in the bathroom. —Kansas City STAR, September 21, 2021

No one knew it when the old man died.

The uncollected mail, unanswered phone,

untended grass.  Nobody notified

authorities.  He’d always coped alone

with caring for his sister and his mother,

dependent as the dog for food and drink

on one who didn’t want to be a bother

to friends or neighbors.  What are we to think

of this small tragedy?  Whom shall we curse?        

Who counts inconsequential lives like these,

as millions vanish from the universe

from hunger, guns, disaster, and disease?

Humanity has nothing new to learn.

When time has ended, still the stars will burn.

 

Barbara Loots wonders why we worry when we are all so small in the overall scheme of things.

I SEE TONIGHT

Earl J. Wilcox has been seeing days and nights poetically for The New Verse News for years and years.

SPACE-TIME DESIRE

by Art Goodtimes

Tweeted by @SciencepornPics

More than the spark

of the 4th’s faux bombardments

 

it’s the dark

with its slow burn

of thousands of nuclear fires

 

that makes me appreciate

the exploding population of stars

that we imitate

 

That all nature mimics

 

This space-time desire

to expand beyond all limits

 

That colors our lives

vermillion and gold

and speeds our demise

as a billionaire species

 

Beautiful

Deadly

Perplexing

 

Art Goodtimes was an Earth First! poetry editor before getting elected to five terms as a Green county commissioner in Southwestern Colorado, where U.S. Rep. Lauren Boebert (R-Rifle) now represents the Third Congressional district in Congress. Art is co-director of Talking Gourds, a local and regional poetry program under the non-profit aegis of the Telluride Institute.

A WOMAN IN TIGRAY

by Sarah Mackey Kirby

Britain's Channel 4 recently aired a devastating report on these atrocities. One survivor recounted a harrowing 10-day ordeal to the network during which she said she and five other women were gang-raped by Eritrean soldiers. She said the troops joked and took photos as they injected her with a drug, tied her to a rock, stripped, stabbed and raped repeatedly her. Doctors who've treated Tigrayan women have said one woman's vagina was stuffed with nails, stones and plastic. —CBS

is filled with stones,

nails. By her captors.

If she is not human,

if she must be bloodline-cleansed

from existence,

then why does crying matter.

 

The sun rises all over the world

as if it doesn’t know.

And sets apricot embers

each evening.

In darkness, a woman in Tigray

is filled with stones.

Filled with soldiers.

Alone below Orion’s belt,

sharp in the night sky,

glowing fire

three stars in a row.

Sarah Mackey Kirby's first poetry collection The Taste of Your Music (Impspired) will be published in May 2021. Her poems have appeared or are forthcoming in Ploughshares, Chiron Review, Connecticut River Review, Impspired Magazine, and elsewhere. She and her husband live in Louisville, Kentucky.

POST-THANKSGIVING 2020

by Barbara Schweitzer

“Only Human,” painting by Judith Dawson.

We are such little twisty things

protoplasm and cell productions

who eat turkey in November

and hotdogs in July

who love intensely our neighbor-in-bed

then plot coups with the Deplorables.

We are unthinkable most times

and dumb the rest

yet we climb and hope

and endure so that we might

not cascade into the smarmy oceans

we have made. We pick our way

so that we might reach an alp

and spread our small intelligences

like faraway stars into a universe.

We are just enough bare-boned and starving

to go on and on and on though we remain

still closer to slime than to god.

Barbara Schweitzer is still writing poems and plays and Cyjoe Barker mysteries in upstate RI.

THE ROAD HOME

by Tricia Knoll

“Road Home Through Chaos,” Mixed Media Photo Collage with acrylic paint on museum standard stretched canvas by Kim Vergil.

Stop by the school; yellow crosswalk on the road. 

Road kill skunk. 

Stop light at the mini-mall. Squad car in the lot. 

Right turn lane to airport. Go straight. 

Over the freeway bridge, past the corn field on the left, 

  gravel pit on the right. 

Fleet of foot fox crosses the road. 

Half moon overhead. 

Up with the bright beams

to catch the RBG lace

I hung on the mailbox

to remind me

 

that going home

is not just a road, 

it’s a piece of mind. 

 

Slow for the turn 

to the gravel road

we’ll plow as needed. 

Peace of mind

in a moon cycle 

studded with stars

like the drones they flew

in the fireworks. 

 

Road home. 

Road home. 

I made it home. 

Tricia Knoll upgraded to cable news shows two months ago to watch election coverage. After a tense week post-election, the headline finally changed. A new President and Vice President. Whatever comes next, she feels at home again for the first time in years.

ELECTION

 by Marguerite K. Flanders

Photograph by Kim Seng of Red Shoulder Hawk Perched on Live Oak at Riverbend Park in Jupiter, Florida. Via Flickr. Some rights reserved.

 “Soul selects its own society” —Emily Dickinson

 

Oaks are the last to cast their burdens.

Air is full of the athleticism of change.

 

Chickadees greet the end of the straight road

of night with their tally, the decisive chill.

 

The science of what must turn will leave us

bereft. We wait for all to be revealed,

 

as if choosing will shift the relentless

trajectory of stars, restore what has been

 

felled. Hawk, oak, brook, co-trustees

of winter’s approach, know better.

Marguerite Keil Flanders is the Managing Editor of Crosswinds Poetry Journal.  For nine years she was part of the Ocean State Poetry team running a poetry workshop in the Men’s Medium Security prison in Cranston, Rhode Island.  Margie is the author of a poetry collection, The Persuasive Beauty of Imperfection. Her work has appeared in many publications, including Boston Review, Yankee Magazine, Comstock Review, Nimrod International Journal, Connecticut River Review, and Main Street Rag.

PRESIDENTIAL DEBATE

by Juditha Dowd

Moon Behind the Oak, a photograph by Alinore Rose

Instead I watched the moon. I watched the moon climb up

the branches of the Rosenbauers’ oak and lift off into open sky.

By then a few stars and planets had pierced the urban night,

their sparkle suggesting forward movement as I viewed them

alone from our porch—it seemed they were headed somewhere.

Soon I was so caught up in thinking about their voyage

I forgot about the frost and the ruined tomatoes and the ruin

of where we’re headed here on earth, driven by barking dogs.

Is it better now that we understand the stars? Was it easier to believe

that all is preordained and all we need to do is bow our heads

and go along? I watched the moon find the windows of every house

on our block. Same moon, same light. I watched until it crested

and fell down our hill toward the college. Then there was nothing

to do but go back in.

 

Juditha Dowd’s latest book is Audubon’s Sparrow (Rose Metal Press, 2020).

IN SEARCH OF ALIEN CIVILISATIONS

by Martha Landman

According to a new study in The Astrophysical Journal, scientists at the University of Nottingham estimate that there is a minimum of 36 communicating intelligent alien civilizations in the Milky Way galaxy. —CBS News, June 18, 2020

sitting on the veranda the other night
enjoying a hashish pipe
I got dreamy
and disappeared into the Milky Way
passing Venus and Mars
I didn’t stop this time
because they had a domestic quarrel   again
                                      palm to palm
my sky map forged me ahead      to Orion
who offered beer and cigarettes, chips and cheese
Conselice was staying the night
his nephew E.T. played with his Rubik’s Cube
                     trying to solve the Drake equation
we sat on a mega rock   Orion and I had a long chat
                                           between wake and sleep
about alien galaxies meandering around
when his laser phone detonated three loud shrills
it was Peter Backus wanting us to know
“we live in a very quiet neighbourhood”
Orion’s eyes were large      I tried to pacify him
quoting Rumi: “Love is the breath of the cosmos”
he took out his horoscope and zoomed in
                                      on other galaxies
stars were born as we looked at them
alien galaxies were signed in different languages
in front of No 23 a sign on a large wooden gate
said in Hebrew:  תישאר בחוץ לעזאזל – “stay the heck out” -
this is holy land      we assumed
         we needed an exit strategy
we weren’t going to make a covenant with hypocrisy
or with gypsies on walking sticks    their blood green
so we flowed down lava tubes through pigeon holes
                                into a glorious dystopia

Martha Landman writes in Adelaide, South Australia and has previously contributed to TheNewVerse.News.  Her chapbook Between Us was published by Ginninderra Press in November 2019.

WHERE NO MAN HAS GONE BEFORE

by Mark Williams 

With each of three lies
Pinocchio’s nose
doubled in length from his face
to a distance
(assuming it started at one)
of eight unflattering inches.

Ten thousand untruths,
our Commander-in-Chief
has told since taking office. Imagine
how far his proboscis would reach.
Andromeda? Centaurus?
Sagittarius?

Most recently Mark Williams’s writing has appeared in Jokes Review, New Ohio Review, The American Journal of Poetry, The Southern Review, Drunk Monkeys, Poets Reading the News, Tuck Magazine, and Writers Resist. After more than eight thousand calculations, he gave up and postulated the galaxies in his poem. He lives in Evansville, Indiana. But when he faces south, he is inching toward Kentucky.

THE SURVEYOR'S REPORT

a belated Pi Day (3.14) poem
by Karen Greenbaum-Maya

It's a cruel people.
Barbarians, they keep dead trees
among the struggling living, shocked green,
though they must know
the hate they cause.

They ignore the stars,
prefer five-armed simpletons,
castrated travesties
of those scalding selves.

Not utterly beyond redemption, though.
They worship pi,
even dedicate a day,
prepare charmingly symbolic pastries.

These, also called pi, are imperfectly round,
contain round foods,
and, like these primitives,
are perfectly irrational.

Karen Greenbaum-Maya's first book The Book of Knots and their Untying came out last fall. She co-hosts Fourth Sundays, a poetry reading series in Claremont, California.

MIGRATIONS #1

by Judith Partin Nielsen

Shifting Perception, painting by Jay Alders

                                                                                                  In Memoriam
                                                                                                  José Angel Alfano Solana


We crossed over the border
I won’t say how
and what can I say of
freezing desert nights
black sky blazing stars
then searing, burning sun
tearing into flesh
relentless, relentless
the walking, and fear
then- - - - - - -running, running
as sand clouds appear
against the far sky
running, running- - -and then
I lost you and Juan and
the girl running, running
and falling face down
breathing sand and
dreaming, dreaming of naranjas and
water, rain falling and
phantoms unfurling like giant
sails across the desert floor
and the pounding, pounding of
ocean waves in my ears
and then- - - - -the face, the face
of El Senõr

                                                                                                 

Following a trail of words, mountains, spirit and tears, Judith Partin Nielsen, writer, mother, wife and eventually psychoanalyst left Texas for Colorado in 1985. "Freud said 'everywhere I go, the poet has gone before me.'  May we keep following those footsteps on our paths thru the worlds."