RAINBOW COAT

by Irene Axel

President Donald Trump’s executive order, issued on his first day of the second term, made it official policy: transgender, nonbinary, and intersex identities would no longer be recognized by the federal government. And, in turn, federal agencies started removing the questions that once measured SOGI [Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity] characteristics across approximately 360 data collections. —Instinct, February 19, 2026

A newbie gay sitting in my office

and the intake form said ???

next to sexually active

Girl, I see you.

And when she says I'm here for birth control

I whip out my rainbow pen to take notes and say

my usual normalizing speech

about the benefits of BC past preventing pregnancy

and we settle on a good plan to get to

NO MORE PERIODS

and when she starts to get up I say

hang on my dear what about a pap smear

you are 21 and due

and they say... but I'm well you know???

and I say—gently—aware of the white coat

covering my pride tattoo

you still need cervical cancer screening

and they shuffle their feet and bolt with a

KTHXBYE to go pick up their pills

but at least they were in my office

and now—we won't even know—

how many newbie gays

think they don't need

a gynecologist

when everyone with a cervix

needs the right

rainbow

gynecologist

Author's note: The American College of Obstetrics and Gynecology cannot tell you how the rate of cervical cancer differs in the queer versus the straight population because they do not have enough data, but the ACOG does say that the risk factors for cervical cancer are more prevalent in LGBTQ patients and that ongoing research is needed. In addition, of course, LGBTQ patients may face significant obstacles in getting acreening—particularly transmen who may have a cervix and may not feel comfortable going to a gyn office to get a pelvic exam or pap smear. How are we in the field supposed to understand this underscreened population when federal policy works to obscure them?

Irene Axel is a queer OBGYN and a poet based in California. Her work has appeared in One Art: A Journal of Poetry.

ALGORITHM

by Elaine Sorrentino

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

I’m no statistician
but I wonder if UnitedHealth factored in

the percentage of declined subscribers
who would rejoice over deadly revenge

when calculating risk for the most vulnerable─
a system predisposed to dollars over lives,

one with a ninety percent error rate;
what ailing patient is up for that legal battle?

I question where my claim would land
in the roulette wheel of computations;

having dipped into this well twice,
would my ball stop in the red DENIED pocket?

Elaine Sorrentino has been published in Minerva Rising, Willawaw Journal, Glass: A Journal of Poetry, Ekphrastic Review, ONE ART: a journal of poetry, Haiku Universe,The New Verse News, Sparks of Calliope, Gyroscope Review, Quartet Journal, The Raven’s Perch,and Panoplyzine. She hosts the Duxbury Poetry Circle, was featured on a poetry podcast at Onyx Publications. Her first collection of poetry, called Belly Dancing in a Brown Sweatsuit is in production at Kelsay Books.

GAME CHANGER

by Felicia Nimue Ackerman

Major League Baseball’s embrace of the Negro Leagues is now recognized in the record book, resulting in new-look leaderboards fronted in several prominent places by Hall of Famer Josh Gibson and an overdue appreciation of many other Black stars. Following the 2020 announcement that seven different Negro Leagues from 1920-1948 would be recognized as Major Leagues, MLB announced [in May] that it has followed the recommendations of the independent Negro League Statistical Review Committee in absorbing the available Negro Leagues numbers into the official historical record. —MLB. Above: Portraits of Satchel Paige (left) and Josh Gibson by Graig Kreindler from the collection of Jay Caldwell via MLB.

Let's hear it now for Satchel Paige,

Installed on baseball's center stage,

And see Josh Gibson top Babe Ruth

When baseball tells the simple truth.

Felicia Nimue Ackerman is a professor of philosophy at Brown University and has had over 280 poems in places including American Atheist, The American Scholar, Better Than Starbucks, The Boston Globe, The Chronicle of Higher Education, Down in the Dirt, The Emily Dickinson International Society Bulletin, Free Inquiry, The Galway Review, Light Poetry Magazine, Lighten Up Online, The Los Angeles Times, The New York Daily News, The New York Times, Options (Rhode Island's LGBTQ+ magazine), The Providence Journal, Scientific American, Sparks of Calliope, Time Magazine, The Wall Street Journal, and Your Daily Poem. She has also had five previous poems in The New Verse News.

SMALL WAR

by Richard O'Connell

Image Source: The Bureau of Investigative Journalism

Evil is statistical: a long-range game of mind:
Programming the data: it's merely a matter
Of parallel logistics: a mythic country
Ground in the joint jaws of an identical cancer.

Look at the map: It's a lesson in dissolution.
It could go on forever if we're careful,
Diverting blood and the precise amount of terror:
The only treason: reason: quelling the confusion.

It's a matter of girding them: a bright meat grinder:
Of obfuscating all the nasty boring facts:
Those muddy faces fleeing towards you from vague fire,
Carrying their homes and the maimed on their backs.


Richard O'Connell lives in Hillsboro Beach, Florida. Collections of his poetry include RetroWorlds, Simulations, Voyages, and The Bright Tower, all published by the University of Salzburg Press (now Poetry Salzburg). His poems have appeared in The New Yorker, Measure, Trinacria The Atlantic Monthly, National Review, Margie, The Texas Review, Acumen, The Formalist, Light.