The New Verse News presents politically progressive poetry on current events and topical issues.
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prohibited travel items is solidarity for the world’s
oppressed. don’t put solidarity in your luggage. you
can’t leave with that. you definitely can’t come home with
that. at customs, we need an itemized list of any
new truths you have in your bags that we’ve been
hiding from you here in America. empty your
pockets and prove to me you’re not carrying a
trinket that connects you to another man’s struggle.
take off your shoes and socks and place your
brown feet on this white floor as a reminder. a
reminder that every border crossing is a strip
search and a cudgel, distilling you into something
that fits more easily into an overhead compartment
or a cage or a grave.
but today I had to laugh at that. because all my
aunties were third world women. and now we're
running it back, old and new blessings. all my
aunties were third world women. all my aunties
were third world women.
Vinay Krishnan is a writer and community organizer. His poetry has
appeared in Cordite Poetry Review, his fiction has appeared in Barren
Magazine, and his non-fiction has appeared in SLAM Magazine.
Abraham begat Isaac; and Isaac begat Jacob; and Jacob begat Judas and his brethren; And Judas begat Phares and Zara of Thamar; and Phares begat Esrom; and Esrom begat Aram. —Matthew 1:2-3
The egg begat the chicken and the farmer begat overalls and the middleman begat the supermarket.
The coffee begat the customer and the bean begat the roast and the desire begat the brand.
The strawberry begat the pickers and brown hands begat ICE and Native Americans begat the land.
MAGA begat the bullies and an outdated amendment begat the gun and the school shooter begat the bodies.
The Bible begat the commandments and scripture begat cherry-picking and nationalism begat hypocrisy.
Adam begat Eve and the rib begat the barbecue and the flames begat the fire.
Injustice begat the boycott and hope begat light and the day begat the struggle.
Daniel Romo's latest book is Bum Knees and Grieving Sunsets.
Born in Johannesburg in 1932, Peter Magubane documented the brutality of apartheid and suffered from banning orders, solitary confinement and beatings as a result. From teaching himself as a boy with a Brownie camera, he went on to work for the influential magazine Drum and became Nelson Mandela’s official photographer. He died on New Year’s Day aged 91. Photo: The Soweto uprising on 16 June 1976, when more than 15,000 children protested against an editct making Afrikaans the medium of instruction in black schools. At first, the refused to be photographed but Magubane said a struggle without documentation was no struggle and they had to show the world what was going on in South Africa. The students agreed and this picture was taken by Peter Magubane. —The Guardian, January 12, 2024
With shadow and light
you engrave enduring images
in our collective consciousness,
lend us your eyes as microscope
that bores deep beneath the skin,
telescope that scans beyond the stars.
Broken bodies scattered at your feet—
one camera concealed in a milk carton,
another in a loaf of bread or Bible—
you chronicle histories of struggle,
revealthe beast that lurkswithin
and humanity that is possible.
Confined to solitary
blocks of cold cement,
you do not let them hold
or break your indomitable will,
bequeath your hammering heart
to our beleaguered world.
You squint far beyondthe time
you have seeded with your vision,
reclaim the radiance of rainbows,
splendor of the setting sun,
knowing, somewhere,
it will rise again.
Donna Katzin has served as the founding and former executive director of Shared Interest, a 30 year old non-profit organization that facilitates access to credit for low-income Black Southern Africans. In that capacity, she was privileged to meet and collaborate with Peter Magubane, and honor him. She currently co-coordinates Tipitapa Partners, which helps feed impoverished children and empower their mothers in Nicaragua. She also serves on the Board of the Fund for Community Change, as well as the Tikun Olam Commission of Reconstructing Judaism—working on reparations in the U.S. A proud wife and mother, she is a contributor to TheNew Verse News and author of With These Hands—poems about the "new" South Africa giving birth to itself.
that drag queens don to hide and reveal themselves,
the revelation there disguised as camouflage.
I think of the teen performers, their happy hearts
aflutter, swelling at doing good for their friends
and, maybe, speaking their own truth this one night,
free at last of fear. I think, too, of the swim team
I coached, the high school boys and girls in Lycra suits
so tight, their all revealed to minimize their drag,
the chlorinated water streaming over all
those athletic kids, their genitals (whichever ones)
on sanitized display. And the cheerleaders at games,
the girls at school dance shows in scanty costumes clad,
their gyrations, their undulations, their high kicks,
the boys dressed as cheerleaders at powder-puff games
(with balloons for breasts inside those too-tight sweaters),
all well and good and part of God’s great plan I guess
for no tsunami of e-mailed outrage floods
the school board and threatens to bring their righteous faith
to fill the board’s next meeting with the fear of God.
I think of our school board members, no Moses-es
to part the Red Sea, their elected hearts hardened
against LGBTQ kids, those two-faced pols
who applaud the group for supporting our LG
BTQ students who struggle for acceptance
but thank them for not doing it on our campus
where Pentecostal flames yet burn. God, they are snakes.
Cecil Morris wiles away his retirement—after 37 years of teaching high school English!—reading, writing, and riding the bike that doesn’t move through scenery of podcasts and boredom. His recent publications include "The Nine Ways of St. Dominic" at Amethyst Review, "after our daughter passes, we go camping" at Neologism Poetry Journal. He also has poems in or forthcoming in Carmina Magazine, Evening Street Review, The New Verse News, Sugar House Review, and other literary magazines.
The U.S. Forest Service failed to consider how a changing climate could make the landscape more flammable, didn’t adequately estimate the risk of a controlled fire escaping and used incomplete weather information as a prescribed burn went awry and later formed the largest wildfire in New Mexico history, the agency said in a report released Tuesday. The 85-page report describes how federal fire managers, who felt under pressure to complete the prescribed burn while they had the available personnel, made miscalculations and overlooked warning signs—including low humidity, the potential for erratic winds on complex terrain and the heavy, dry fuel loads that could stoke a runaway fire. Although crews followed the burn plan, it contained flawed and incomplete analyses, and some guidelines were out of date amid a prolonged drought, the report said. The result: The prescribed burn ignited a wildfire that later merged with another prescribed burn to create the Hermits Peak/Calf Canyon Fire, scorching 341,746 acres as of Tuesday and destroying hundreds of homes in a 500-square-mile area. Santa Fe New Mexican, June 21, 2022. Photo: Hot shot crew members keep an eye on a blaze June 15 as fire crews ignite the underbrush in an effort to contain the Pipeline Fire near Flagstaff, Ariz. (Rachel Gibbons/Arizona Daily Sun/AP via The Washington Post)
Northern New Mexico
Sixty days of flame—
and I watch the sky
as a sailor watches the sea—
for signs in color and wind
and heading—to tell me
how even the air tires
of hefting its load of ash—
of remains of homestead
and livestock—tall-pine
forest—tractor and pickup
Until you’ve seen
a high plains landscape
scorched into a nightscape—
a contagion of char—
blackness wherever you look—
you don’t realize what a task
to bend language
into a portrait of asteroidal
extinction—a voided canvas
of negative space that may
take nature forever—if ever—
to paint over and fill in
For friends who’ve lost all—
out of fire simmers the future
in a boil of uncertainty—
a rage smoldering in the mind—
no dream fully smothers
How can I with words reseed
generations of struggle—
sow trust that morning ignites yet
with sun’s benign fury—perhaps
not tomorrow—or the next—
but one day—amid sapling
of needle and leaf—short
grass prairie fed upon
by mother and calf—fields
you begin again to recognize
as the only soil you’ve worked—
and wept over—since you were
born
Dick Altman writes in the high, thin, magical air of Santa Fe, NM, where, at 7,000 feet, reality and imagination often blur. He is published in Santa Fe Literary Review, American Journal of Poetry, riverSedge, Fredericksburg Literary Review, Foliate Oak, Blue Line, THE Magazine, Humana obscura, The Offbeat, Haunted Waters Press, Split Rock Review, The RavensPerch, Beyond Words, The New Verse News, Sky Island Journal, and others here and abroad. A poetry winner of Santa Fe New Mexican’s annual literary competition, he has in progress two collections of some 100 published poems. His work has been selected for the first volume of The New Mexico Anthology of Poetry forthcoming from the New Mexico Museum Press.
Michael L. Ruffin is a writer, editor, preacher, and teacher living and working in Georgia. He posts poems on Instagram (@michaell.ruffin) and prose opinions at On the Jericho Road. He is author of Fifty-Seven: A Memoir of Death and Life and Praying with Matthew. His poetry has appeared at The New Verse News, Rat's Ass Review, 3 Moon Magazine, and U-Rights Magazine.
The American nun, who was gang raped and tortured in Guatemala, died of cancer in Washington, DC. She had been helping indigenous Guatemalans when she was captured. The government suspected the indigenous of left wing subversion, with the United States backing the Guatemalan military in its civil war. The nun was burned by cigarettes, exposed to dead bodies and rats, and forced to mutilate another captive with a machete. She jumped out of a car as the man with accented Spanish drove her to a new location. She fled to the United States and struggled to remember her life there. She sued a Guatemalan general who was studying at Harvard. A judge ordered him to pay millions but he escaped to Guatemala. She told a reporter that even though she was Catholic she struggled to forgive.
Karol Nielsen is the author of two memoirs and two poetry chapbooks. Her first memoir was shortlisted for the William Saroyan International Prize for Writing. Her poetry collection was a finalist for the Colorado Prize for Poetry.
We keep our eyes peeled, our chins up, our fingers crossed. Feet
planted firmly on the ground. We keep our heads. Keep noses
to their respective grindstones.
We earn our keep. Keep it safe. Keep body and soul together.
Keep busy. Keep up the pace. Try to keep ourselves and those we
love from harm. We keep at it. Keep going.
Keep our upper lips stiff.
Keep on truckin’.
We keep secrets, memories, friends. We keep in touch.
Keep watch on the world, up with the news. Keep tabs on
what’s what and who’s who.
Keep score.
We keep our word. We keep strong in troubled seas.
We struggle to keep the flame of truth
on an altar of honor.
Janet Shainheit lives and writes in Worcester, MA. She is a happily retired school librarian, and the grateful friend of poetry and poets.
We lean our backs against
A bleached driftwood log
While we eat our simple lunch
And watch the Pacific
Approach and fall back
Approach and fall back
Like a shy teenager
Trying to work up the courage
To ask for a dance.
After our meal
We lie down on the sand
Our small packs pillowing our heads
Our sun hats covering our faces
And fall asleep
For a half-hour or so
Then awaken stiffly and reluctantly
Peering out from under our hat brims
At the glinting ocean,
Listening to the soft splashing
Of gently breaking waves.
As we yawn and stretch
Watching a plastic bottle
Wash up onto the beach
Our sleep-scattered thoughts
Slowly pull themselves together
And we feel the return of grief
For all that is being done
To our wracked and battered Earth,
Our fears for us all
Flooding our hearts once more.
We stand up, hoist our packs,
Brush off the sand,
Take a few deep breaths of sea air
For the road,
Then head out across dunes and pastures
Back to our car
And back to the global struggle
To repair a world out of whack.
Buff Whitman-Bradley's poetry has appeared in many print and online journals, including Atlanta Review, Bryant Literary Review, Concho River Review, Crannog, december, Hawai'i Review, Pinyon, Rockhurst Review, Solstice, Third Wednesdayand others. He has published several collections of poems, most recently, To Get Our Bearings in this Wheeling World. His interviews with soldiers who refused to fight in Iraq and Afghanistan became the book About Face: Military Resisters Turn Against War. He lives in northern California with his wife Cynthia.
