AMERICA’S PRECIPICE

by Laura Boatner

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

It starts with one stone
      a chipping away, chiseling of sorts
      digging to China as my mother always         
      said                                        

In China it was pounded into sand
       and their people have known it
       for seven decades or so

Here, babbling brooks, once slick as silk
        have rough edges now etched
        into fifty pieces, maybe fifty-one

A carnival barker yelling;
        flushed face, eyebrows furrowed
        the color of honeydew, or more
        fluorescent than that
     
Stones and bricks in a road leading to Oz
        because this doesn’t feel quite real
        and the curtains are pulled back

Judges, legislators, 
           one at a time acquiescing 
           out of fear, reprisal
           is this really happening?
               to us of all people?
               right now?
               like we’re scarecrows or something?

In one-hundred days
               the rocks have become boulders
               on shoulders of complacency
 
David threw a rock at Goliath 
              hitting the target
              unlike we do at the strongman 

A mountain of stone
              penetrated upon and fissured
              and it’s on this precipice that 
              we now stand

Laura Boatner is a registered nurse by day and an aspiring writer by night.  She has been published in scholarly nursing journals, but finds it much more fun to write fiction.  She has been accepted into the MAPW program at Kennesaw State University in Fall 2025.  She lives in Atlanta, Georgia with her husband and her two rescue pups, Birdie and Pepper.

HARRIS/WALZ HAIGA

by Paul Brassard

Public Domain Photo from Flickr by Bernard Spragg

Paul Brassard is a retired teacher of high school students with behavioral challenges. He has been writing poetry and fiction since he wrote his first short story Honolulu Calling at the age of twelve. Paul has been writing a personal haiku, senyru or haiga every day for the past several years as a method of self-reflection or in response to current events. He writes his short stories and poetry at his home in South Portland, Maine, which he shares with Patti, his wife of 50 years. His writing has appeared in The New Verse News.

WHERE DO YOU GO TO DIE?

by Adele Evershed

Liberal Democrat MP Layla Moran has said that she is "deeply worried" for her extended family in Gaza. Moran's mother is Palestinian and members of her family in Gaza are sheltering in a church after an Israeli missile struck their home. Speaking to the BBC's Victoria Derbyshire, she said: "No longer are people saying, where do we go to be safe? The question they are now asking is, where do we want to be when we die?" —BBC, October 29, 2023

to the sea
already so full of salt
so you become part of the ebb and flow
governed only by the mourning moon
and any tears shed lost in the tumult of waves
or crusted in the creases of a carcass 
left to rot on a far distant shore
 
to a rowan tree
already listing from the bombardment
so you can nourish the roots
that once nourished you
and the redness of your screams
can hang like a bloody reminder
of all the things you were too young to see
 
to the mountain top
with its beguiling back story 
so your shallow breath 
can dovetail with the off white clouds
and fall as gentle soaking rain
delivering an absolution
to those who have asked for none
 
or do you simply 
pick up a stone
and say…
I will not die today

Adele Evershed is a Welsh poet living in America. She has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net. Finishing Line Press published Adele’s first poetry chapbook Turbulence in Small Places in July. Her Novella-in-Flash Wannabe was published by Alien Buddha Press in May. Her second poetry collection The Brink of Silence is available from Bottlecap Press.

A NEW WINSTON CHURCHILL STATUE

by Tom Bauer

‘Self-indulgent’: Churchill statue plans stir public controversy, perplexity over motivation. Statue will be installed at Calgary’s McDougall Centre in 2023. —Livewire Calgary, August 27, 2022

Like deadly white mold, signs keep surfacing.

The skin of life develops pustules and blisters;

past echos of a fierce disease of dominance

resurfacing to blight the natural landscape.

Looking at faces I see hope and care.

I see landscapes of spontaneous growth

moving as one towards some shared outcome

each of us unconsciously wants to see.

Statues do not see, and will not see us through

their purpose, ownership of all we seem.

Their stone presence blocks our human landscape.

The greatest monument might come to be

feeling connected when we come together

and see the real enemy: the harms we cause.

Tom Bauer's an old coot who lives in Montreal and plays a lot of board games.

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.

BOOK TITLES NOT ACCESSIBLE FOR CLASSROOM USE

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

“School librarians are professionals dedicated to the education and protection of children while cultivating a thirst for knowledge. We should trust them to do their jobs – while holding them accountable – not subvert their expertise by searching for a solution to a problem that doesn’t exist. There are already processes in place if a parent wants to challenge a book that they find inappropriate or have concerns about. These processes are designed at the local level to adjudicate the challenges because one size does not fit all when it comes to education. The state should respect the local processes in place in Texas.” —Texas Library Association, January 20, 2022. Photo by Getty; Adam Maida at "This Is a Shakedown: Texas has a book-banning problem" by Emma Sarappo at The Atlantic, December 9, 2021

                                     

deep in the heart of texas 

there is a bonfire of books 

burning words  

like witches 

there is no white heat   

no smoke 

but still they burn 

in their sealed boxes 

by those who would coffin thought 

beware 

those who would scatter the ashes 

what is written on paper 

is also written in stone 

Sister Lou Ella has a master’s in theology from St. Mary’s University in San Antonio and 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 The New Verse 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 and in 2020. Her first book of poetry entitled she: robed and wordless was published in 2015 (Press 53.) On May 11, 2021, five poems from her book which had been set to music by James Lee III were performed by the opera star Susanna Phillips, star clarinetist Anthony McGill, pianist Mayra Huang at the 92nd Street Y in New York City. The group of songs is entitled “Chavah’s Daughters Speak.”

BEFORE EARTH IS LOST

by George Salamon

“In Conclusion” by Peter Kuper at The Nib

"Humans have become as great an influence on the planet as the asteroid that wiped out the dinosaurs," Anthony Barnosky, Stanford University biologist, quoted in The New York Times, July 30, 2021

Paradise was lost long ago,

now it's the turn of Earth,

where humans have assumed

privileges and rights for themselves:

this island belongs to us, one

nation claims, another the right

to inhabit space.

We're mammals, denying the

prehistory of our origins, the

story of how our ancestors

turned the earth's jungles into

today's fortress of machine

and stone.

We've moved too quickly past

the awe for earth's order, left

behind in the wild, playful

nature of the child, now that 

we are beginning to feel the

coming storm.

George Salamon lives and waits, hoping for the best, in St. Louis, MO.

EASTER DAY: 2020

by Devon Balwit

The Empty Tomb by He Qi

Here we are—days spent walled
in our tombs, straining for some sign of life,
pondering the world’s dissolution, our stalled
plans. The promises of faith we only half-
believe, yet still we send out hope like Noah’s
dove over the waters. Somewhere, the numbers
are favorable; someone descends from the peak, awe
gilding their face, glowing like the ruddy embers
of an almost-spent fire. We listen from within
our darkness for footsteps. Help was promised
us, a stone rolled away, rebirth. We begin
the same dance of every day, optimism
with despair, praying for the gasped: come and see—
the surprising confirmation the tomb is empty.


Devon Balwit's most recent collection is titled A Brief Way to Identify a Body (Ursus Americanus Press). Her individual poems can be found in here as well as in Jet Fuel, The Worcester Review, The Cincinnati Review, Tampa Review, Apt (long-form issue), Tule Review, Grist, and Rattle among others.

AND SO IT GOES

by Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer 

Dating back 40,000 years to the Denisovan species of early humans, new pictures show beauty and craftsmanship of prehistoric jewellery. It is intricately made with polished green stone and is thought to have adorned a very important woman or child on only special occasions. Yet this is no modern-day fashion accessory and is instead believed to be the oldest stone bracelet in the world, dating to as long ago as 40,000 years. Unearthed in the Altai region of Siberia in 2008, after detailed analysis Russian experts now accept its remarkable age as correct.  New pictures show this ancient piece of jewellery in its full glory with scientists concluding it was made by our prehistoric human ancestors, the Denisovans, and shows them to have been far more advanced than ever realised. 'The bracelet is stunning - in bright sunlight it reflects the sun rays, at night by the fire it casts a deep shade of green,' said Anatoly Derevyanko, Director of the Institute of Archaeology and Ethnography in Novosibirsk, part of the Siberian Branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences. —Anna Liesowska, The Siberian Times, May 7, 2015. Photo: Vera Salnitskaya

Thirty thousand years before the Stone Age,
someone made a bracelet of chlorite.
In the sun, the same sun that we know,
the bracelet glittered and reflected the rays.
In the night, just as dark and steep
as our night, the bracelet cast a deep shade
of green. Green, even then, was the color
of growth and new life. And the bracelet,
say the scientists, would have been worn
as protection from evil spirits. Not much has changed,
really, though the Denisovan people are long,
long gone from the caves in Siberia, gone
from the planet forever. But I think of how they,
like the homo sapiens, were moved
to make beauty. How they, too, perhaps stood
outside on a clear spring night
and felt the wind, the bright slap of the stars,
the possibility that art might save us.


Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer lives in Southwest Colorado. Her poems have appeared in O Magazine, on A Prairie Home Companion, in back alleys and on river rocks. One-word mantra: Adjust.