ON THE MORNING THE CITY CHANGED ITS WALK

by Khayelihle Benghu

 

 

 

 

On the morning the march moved through Johannesburg,
shop gates came down early.


Metal shutters lowered like tired eyelids


before the day had fully spoken.
Foreign-owned stores locked their doors


before noon,


keys turning twice


as if once was no longer enough


to believe in safety.
The taxi driver changed his route again,


avoiding streets where voices


had grown sharper than traffic,


where even the robots seemed unsure


who they were guiding anymore.
No one calls it fear,


but everyone adjusts their walking speed.


Everyone becomes a little more careful


with how they look at strangers.
Somewhere, a shopkeeper counts what might be lost


stock, rent, the years built behind a counter.


Somewhere else, a protester counts what has already been taken


jobs, space, the weight of being seen.
And between them,


the city keeps breathing uneven, uncertain,


but still holding everyone inside it.
A child watches from a doorway


that is neither open nor closed.


A flag lifts, then folds back into itself


as if unsure what it is becoming.
No one says the same story.


But everyone carries the same heat


under their skin.
Later, when the streets grow quiet again,


when footsteps return to ordinary distances,


there is still this question left behind:
how do we live here together


without teaching ourselves


to fear each other's names.

Khayelihle Benghu is a South African writer and an author of The Names We Carry. She explores the themes of resilience grieve, silence and love in every day setting.

TRUE COLORS

by Julie Steiner

"Refugees Welcome" by Omar Ab Abdallat

A Haitian family's asylum case shows double standard at the border: It took three doctors, a small team of lawyers and multiple nonprofits on both sides of the border to get an exemption for a Haitian family seeking asylum in the United States… Border officials have routinely granted exemptions to Ukrainian nationals while subjecting asylum seekers from other countries to much more scrutiny. That included the Haitian family, who had to wait almost four months to get an exemption. Advocates said their case underscores just how arbitrary and unfair the country’s asylum system is right now. —KPBS, April 5, 2022

We’re opening our hearts and homes and wallets.

We’ve got donations piling up on pallets

for families in flight from bombs and bullets—

their frightened faces traumatized and pale. It’s

inspiring, seeing decency at work.

It’s proof the world’s not totally berzerk.

When strangers need our help, we never shirk

our duty. (If their faces aren’t too dark.)

Julie Steiner is a pseudonym in San Diego, California. Besides The New Verse News, the venues in which Julie's poetry has appeared include the Able Muse Review, Rattle, Light, and The Asses of Parnassus.

IN THE PICK 'N SAVE PARKING LOT

by Lisa Vihos

Looking over
the top of my mask
my glasses already steamed,
I meet your eyes, stranger,
and we smile.

We cannot see these smiles
but we know we are smiling.
The twinkle in the eye tells all.
We raise our hands in silent salute.

Nothing could have prepared us
for this moment, or maybe
everything did.
If only our hands could meet,
right here, we’d become a prayer.

We know we are members
of the same tribe,
fighting an insidious evil
that flourishes on the breath,
on the wind, and has run
unchecked in all the lies of now,
and in all the lies past.
Let it be unchecked no more.

In the journey towards justice,
there is just us, essential prophets
seeing beyond the mask.

Lisa Vihos has four chapbooks and her poems have appeared in numerous journals, both print and online. She is a two-time Pushcart Prize nominee and the poetry and arts editor of Stoneboat Literary Journal. Just this past week, Vihos was named the poet laureate of Sheboygan, WI—the city's first—where she also serves as an organizer for 100 Thousand Poets for Change.  

KEEPING INDEPENDENCE

by Archana Sankaran

Old Beggar With a Boy - Pablo Picasso, 1903

I will keep my
strong sense of independence,
my fierce will,
precious freedom
and hopefully,
creative lust.
Until the minute coffers
where I pinned my
existential insecurities,
stand near empty.
But empty, it does not
scare me anymore.
I have seen empty,
spread those bowls of begging
and received often pity
but sometimes crumbs
that were and are of
much value to me.
That some people can
be kind, never mind if grudgingly
to strangers.
There certainly is
a clarity, a looking at truth
a freedom at empty.
Oh, what a wonderful
place I am at, tonight.
Happy at going to full.
And happy to get to empty.


Archana Sankaran is a poet based in India. She is also an artist . She finds writing poetry often emotionally cathartic. And is grateful for the gift of writing.

DIRE WARNINGS

by Linda Lerner

Image source: Linda Lerner

we were warned to keep away from strangers
to be suspicious of anyone not like us

people of other races and of different religions from ours
atheists and all free spirits especially artists

we were warned about sleeping in other people’s homes
eating food we weren’t familiar with

getting overexcited and too emotional about things
of danger lurking in sleep away camp and open road clubs

discouraged from swimming, bike riding getting too much sun
we were warned about touching ourselves and

of men who only wanted one thing
about drugs and sex and how “the more you get the more you want”

we were warned about many things
but nobody warned us about the trees

we played ring around the rosy under
that kept the sun from burning us

trees whose leaves dazzled us with color every autumn
infested with fungus or mold and dying of root rot

environmentalists sent out alarms with  predictions
we dismissed along with climate change as nonsense

nobody warned us that the trees would become killers
and uproot lifting up slabs of concrete from under us

break thru iron gates into homes flattening cars 
killing anyone in their way

nobody warned us…


Linda Lerner's Takes Guts and Years Sometimes (New & Selected Poems) is published by New York Quarterly Press.