HOMELESS

by John Valentine

Dharmik Vibes

What is madness but nobility of soul
at odds with circumstance?
—Theodore Roethke, “In a Dark Time” 


At home once in the universe,
the old physicist
used to weave theories of everything
in the cat’s cradle
of his mind. How orderly the atoms
danced, how fleeting the
half-life of years. Wrapped now in rags,
his words spoken
only to the wind, he signs the language
of loss, hands tangled
in mudras, like a manic Buddhist, or an
operator at the
switchboard of chaos, pulling wires,
answering calls,
frantically making connections on the
streets
of the fallen.

John Valentine is a retired philosophy teacher living in Savannah, Georgia.

LOST HIGHWAY

by Steven Kent

It will not be an easy process [to rename streets called after Prince Andrew]. Details on residents’ bank accounts, credit cards, driving licenses, utility bills, property deeds, even pet microchips, will have to change, as will business letterheads and cards. —The Guardian, November 29, 2025

The cost is high to change a roadway's name,

But those which honor Andy (some now claim)

Should be rechristened, each and every mile,

To spare us walking single-pedophile.

Steven Kent is the poetic alter ego of writer and musician Kent Burnside. His work appears in 251, Asses of Parnassus, The Dirigible Balloon, Light, Lighten Up Online, The Lyric, New Verse News, The Orchards Poetry Journal, Philosophy Now, The Pierian, Pulsebeat Poetry Journal, The Road Not Taken: A Journal of Formal Poetry, Snakeskin, and Well Read. His collections I Tried (And Other Poems, Too) (2023) and Home at Last (2025) are published by Kelsay Books.

A FABLE

by Howie Good

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

Someone is shouting, “Freedom!” 
or maybe “Free them!” The shouts
 
echo through gray, empty streets 
and die. I don’t follow the news. 
 
I’m not into politics. I walk down 
a street lined with soldiers and tanks. 
 
I turn up a street named for a tyrant.


Howie Good is a professor emeritus at SUNY New Paltz whose newest poetry book The Dark is available from Sacred Parasite, a Berlin-based publisher.

WE THE PEOPLE

 by Anayo Dioha

“Why are Nigerians protesting? Young people were roused by events in Kenya.” —The Guardian, August 3, 2024

You and your peeps pillage the purse of the people;
State proceeds hang beyond the reach of the people.
 
Passing frivolous bills, paying frivolous bills;
A despot’s impunity in full glare of the people.
 
Yesterday, presidential yacht. Today, presidential jet.
What frivolity awaits tomorrow? ponder the people.
 
A new SUV to distinguish a senator. A new 
Minimum wage? Uncalled for; can’t pay the people!
 
In this theatre of independence, the noose of nostalgia
Dares favour the colonist’s over the anthem of the people!
 
And now the streets rage with chants of hunger,
Tell, who can quell the anger of the people.
 
Certainly not those traditional stools that have stood
As stooges. Not those episcopal enemies of the people.
 
Why buy the institutions and become a monopolist
When you could buy hearts and be a man of the people?
 
On where lays your heart, Lord? Where else 
Do your feet stand but on the ground of the people?


Anayo Dioha is a Nigerian and has been previously published in the The New Verse News among other online and print literary journals.

MAP MAKING

by Robin Wright

Draw lines that represent countries.

Go further, pen buildings

whole and firm, houses

with sunflowers, children’s toys

in the yard, bicycle leaning

against a tree, a bench in front

of a library. Populate with people

eating ice cream, strolling the streets.

 

Hold the map close.

 

Soldiers tear it away,

draw guns, tanks,

bodies on the ground

carpeted with blood,

crushed buildings,

landmines meant to erase.

 

Snatch it back,

ink blue sky, yellow sun

above people, buildings,

a child’s future.

Robin Wright lives in Southern Indiana. Her work has appeared in Bombfire Lit, One Art, Young Ravens Literary Review, Olney Magazine, As it Ought to Be, Rat’s Ass Review, Sledgehammer Lit, Muddy River Poetry Review, Sanctuary, and others. She is a Pushcart Prize nominee, and her first chapbook, Ready or Not, was published by Finishing Line Press in October of 2020.

STATE OF EMERGENCY

by Rémy Dambron

Traffic has ground to a halt at the busiest border crossing in North America, as Canadian truckers and others angry with vaccine mandates spread their protest beyond Ottawa. Trucks started blocking the Ambassador Bridge linking the cities of Detroit and Windsor late on Monday, closing down traffic in both directions. On Tuesday, entry to Canada remained blocked while US-bound traffic slowed to a crawl. Each day, 8,000 trucks normally cross the bridge, which handles about 27% of trade between Canada and the US. Protesters also targeted another major border crossing in Coutts, Alberta. Canada’s capital city remained blockaded by hundreds of vehicles from the “freedom convoy” while protest organizers called for a meeting with all federal political leaders – except the prime minister, Justin Trudeau – to find a “peaceful resolution” to the crisis. —The Guardian, February 9, 2022. 5G and QAnon: how conspiracy theorists steered Canada’s anti-vaccine trucker protest. Ottawa’s occupation was a result of unrivaled coordination between anti-vax and anti-government organizations: Thousands of demonstrators have successfully occupied Canada’s frigid capital for days, and say they plan on staying as long as it takes to thwart the country’s vaccine requirements. The brazen occupation of Ottawa came as a result of unprecedented coordination between various anti-vaccine and anti-government organizations and activists, and has been seized on by similar groups around the world. It may herald the revenge of the anti-vaxxers. —The Guardian, February 8, 2022

the clan of anti-vaxxers grows deep

its organizers harvesting the internet in search of troops to spawn 

crowd sourcing sites swarming

bloated with donations 

luring proponents from the fringe 

to strengthen their tribe

in protest of medicine  

masks 

safety 

measures

rules 

…science?

in bad faith 

foreign influencers 

direct funds to float false claims

their target audience erecting camps 

to stake their domain 

demanding more than to be heard 

demanding more

or less

stockpiling fuel for warmth 

as they willfully inhabit 

the bitter cold streets in the name of

freedom

the same streets they insisted

could never be 

home for the homeless

last week they harassed 

soup kitchens 

ordering volunteers to fuel them 

with meals intended to feed

the reluctantly unsheltered 

and vulnerable

this week they taunt police 

issuing threats they once denounced 

instigating confrontations they once decried 

intimidating countrymen they once sought to protect

relieving themselves on local lawns defacing public squares  

promoting disdain 

division 

and next week what then?

confederate flags will continue

soaring high above their lorries 

fiercely flaunting symbols of hatred  

not symbolic of true democracies

not emblematic of our liberties

not representative of we the people

but exhibitive of the perilous tears 

shredding our social fabric 

Author’s Note: We must never lose our ability to distinguish between peaceful protest and civil disturbance. Where the former is an indispensable component of a successful government, the latter is all too often one of its greatest threats. 

Rémy Dambron is a former English teacher now Portland-based poet whose writing focuses on denouncing political corruption and advocating for social/environmental justice. With the help of his chief editor and loving wife, his works have appeared in What Rough Beast, Poets Reading the News, Writers Resist, Society of Classical Poets, Robot Butt, and The New Verse News. 

EMPTIED

 by Andrena Zawinski

The streets and playgrounds, the courts and fields are emptied. 

The string of row house swings emptied of coffee klatches 

across porch rails. Silence on cobbles glistening in morning dew, 

heady scent of honeysuckle wafting by windows we close. 

Framed by the limits of imagination, ears cocked to a sparrow’s song,

sun setting on pyramids, creek beds, ice floes, desert flowers 

past our views of the world, ghosts carousing night winds 

of our mourning, all the eyes on clear skies boasting stars above

moored cargo ships, snow capped peaks, the sweaty rainforests.

Our windows view the emptied harbors, farmlands and vineyards, 

fire escapes and stoops. All of it emptied of the large and small 

solitary pleasures of our fractured lives in this godawful air.

Andrena Zawinski’s poetry has received awards for lyricism, form, spirituality, social concern, many of them Pushcart Prize nominations. Her latest book is Landings (Kelsay Books); others are Something About (Blue Light Press PEN Oakland Award) and Traveling in Reflected Light (Pig Iron Press Kenneth Patchen Prize) along with several chapbooks. She founded and runs the San Francisco Bay Area Women’s Poetry Salon and is a previous contributor to The New Verse News.

"PERHAPS YOU SHOULD ADOPT A MORE CONSERVATIVE POLITICAL ORIENTATION"

by Katherine West

In Memoriam for victims of the Rochester, New York shooting.

My doctor suggests after a complete physical 

He has failed to discover 

The source of my trouble 

Though I feel as if I will never recover 

He finds nothing in the blue pools of my eyes 

What could cause this endless weeping?

Blood pressure numbers don't lie

I will have a long time yet to live 

No medication for what ails me 

I am simply living inside-out 

He seems to imply, wearing my heart on my sleeve 

Where it has no business being, it has no clout 

In the streets, in the slums 

At the parties that are not fun 

Where students lie in pools of blood 

Too much love, he claims, not enough guns

Too much love, he claims, not enough guns 

Where students lie in pools of blood 

At the parties that are not fun 

In the streets, in the slums 

Where it has no business being, it has no clout 

He seems to imply, wearing my heart on my sleeve

I am simply living inside-out 

No medication for what ails me 

I will have a long time yet to live 

Blood pressure numbers don't lie 

What could cause this endless weeping?

He finds nothing in the blue pools of my eyes 

Though I feel as if I will never recover 

The source of my trouble 

He has failed to discover 

My doctor suggests after a complete physical 

"Perhaps you should adopt a more 

conservative political orientation."

Katherine West is the author of three collections of poetry and one novel: Scimitar Dreams, The Bone Train, Riddle, and Lion Tamer, respectively.  She has had poetry published in Bombay Gin, Lalitamba, Tanka Journal, Writing in a Woman’s Voice, and TheNewVerse.News who nominated her poem "And Then the Sky" for a Pushcart Prize in 2019.  She lives in the mountains outside of Silver City, New Mexico where she translates Mexican revolutionary poetry and creates custom, hand-made poetry chapbooks.

KARMA PLUS

by David Radavich





See what pure narcissism
brings forth: a great rot
in the communal apple.

The body politic
spoils top to bottom
and back again.

Every inequity
becomes deadly
as a snake.

We have long since
been thrown out
of the garden.

We roam streets
like zombies
in search of medicine
and care.

How can we be
one family

and not hug
our neighbors
as ourselves?

Pathogens know
our vulnerabilities
and strike
with clear knives.

In the dark night

we become
what we do
for one another.

David Radavich's latest narrative collection is America Abroad: An Epic of Discovery (2019), companion volume to his earlier America Bound: An Epic for Our Time (2007). Recent lyric collections are Middle-East Mezze (2011) and The Countries We Live In (2014). His plays have been performed across the U.S. and in Europe.