MYTHOS AT COMMENCEMENT

by David Anson Lee

Eric Schmidt stood at the stage
like someone introducing age.
He praised A.I.’s unfolding reign.
The graduates booed him just the same.

“You are the future,” Schmidt proclaimed.
The students looked professionally ashamed.
“Machines will free you for new dreams!”
A voice cried out, “They killed internships.”

The billionaires call this “transition,”
their favorite synonym for incision.
At Citadel, whole teams were gone:
outperformed between dusk and dawn.

At Stanford now the freshmen pray
their essays still sound human-made.
The honor code grows frail and thin
when every prompt begins with Begin.

The parents clap. The provost beams.
The deans keep monetizing dreams.
Meanwhile Mythos scans the wire
like scripture crossed with hellfire.

It reads the grid for sport alone,
finds ancient flaws in backbone stone;
then Anthropic, careful, grave,
explains restriction keeps us safe.

Translation: banks and states may peek
while everyone refreshes LinkedIn weekly.
The students boo because they know
the future doesn’t need payroll.

And somewhere in refrigerated light
the servers bloom all through the night,
teaching silicon to replace
the species that designed its face.

David Anson Lee is a physician, philosopher, and poet from Texas whose work explores medicine, technology, public life, and cultural memory. His poems have appeared in journals including Right Hand Pointing, Eunoia Review, Ink Sweat & Tears, and Braided Way.

GREETINGS FROM ARKANSAS

by Mohja Kahf

Lake Wilson, Fayetteville, Arkansas. Photo by the poet.

Thirty years I’ve taught in Arkansas

Sometimes in Arkansas I paddle the lake

under foliage forty-three shades of glory and jade,

as kinetic as my students’ creativities,

and the state forges fetters for thinking minds:

Act 372 tried to make queer library books a crime,

but it turned out Act 372 was a crime

 

Thirty years I’ve curated space for students

to think through choices, weighing in hand,

like palming the heft of Lake Sequoyah pebbles

before picking one to skip across the surface

The state puts hands on our bodies now:

Arkansas Act 180 makes abortion illegal

even after rape, killing more than choice

 

Thirty years I’ve taught in Arkansas

where ice makes bright blades of branches in winter

while daffodils sunshine up through the snow

Forgetting that we live on colonized land,

my state lets ICE deport dreamers

and taxpaying international students,

but defends a mob that scorched the nation’s capital

 

Thirty years I’ve mattocked rocks to upturn soil

where love can grow, and imagination

Act 710 calls boycotting Israel antisemitic hate

makes anyone who wants to speak on campus sign

a pledge never to boycott Zionist Israel—

I’m a proud supporter of nonviolent boycott,
and Act 710 is antisemitic and hateful

 

Sometimes I float the swim hole near Ponca,

thanking my friends who saved the Buffalo River

from hog carcass dumps by agribusiness

till the next polluter tramps in these waters

The state claims that wanting justice for Palestinians 

means wanting to trample on Jewish peoples—

I wish the state would read a queer Palestinian library book

 

Sometimes in Arkansas I hike Hemmed-in-Hollow

and the sunset is streaked purple and healing

My state produces white phosphorus for Israel

to streak skies in Gaza and Lebanon, over Arab folk’s homes

Sometimes my state breaks federal law:

the Leahy Act forbids weapons for war crimes

White phosphorus on civilians is a war crime

even if the civilians aren’t white

 

Thirty red-gold autumns I’ve taught in Arkansas

planting bulbs that push through thirty springtimes

The white phosphorus arsenal risks workers’ health

in Arkansas’ Blackest and poorest city in the Delta

Act 237 calls teaching critically about racism a shame,

calls what I do on campus indoctrination:

Act 237 is a shame and indoctrination

 

Thirty years I’ve taught in Arkansas,

more hemmed in than ever, and hollow here ring

guarantees of First Amendment freedoms

If I invite a white phosphorus expert to campus,

they’d have to sign a loyalty pledge to Israel

Sometimes I hear the queer purple music of the Ozarks,

and the state forges fetters for thinkers and dreamers

Mohja Kahf is author of a novel and three poetry books, including My Lover Feeds Me Grapefruit. Kahf’s work has been translated to Turkish, Japanese, Italian, Arabic, German, Portuguese, Urdu, and French. She is a supporter of the Palestinian-led nonviolent movement for Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions since that movement’s inception in 2005. Winner of a Pushcart Prize and a 2018 Lifetime Award in Inclusive Education from the Northwest Arkansas Democratic Black Caucus, Kahf has been a professor of comparative literature and Middle Eastern studies at the University of Arkansas since 1995. 

ALMA MATER / SOUL MOTHER

by Annie Rachele Lanzillotto

a womb
a place we encourage our youth to strive to go 

to hope to go, 

to set their sites on,
Thayer Street where we promenade our thoughts, 
The SciLi where we fill ourselves with knowledge, 

thousands of hours reading reading everything we can get our hands on,
Soul Mother my heart aches for you
Soul Mother we send our young for your warm embrace,
Soul Mother we fail you, 
Youth we fail you,
Youth full of promise we fail you, 
Fail to protect you from the excesses of rage that is both a byproduct of our society, 
and rage that wells up from within, Rage that is armed.

Oh if it could only be a fair fight again, if only a raging man could have just fists and wits
Oh if only 

But that era is gone
And only one such as Gandhi could put out a meaningful call for all to lay down weapons,
and in the end, 
it was a bullet that got him too
a bullet kills a peacemaker

cursed bullets
cursed designers of bullets
cursed rage that had no better way to explode
cursed testosterone gunpowder rage
cursed whoever politicizes this killing of youth of brilliance of hard-working teenagers striving to carve of this world a better place 
Soul Mother, Alma Mater I ache for you

Annie Rachele Lanzillotto, class of 1986, Brown.

AFTER THE SHOOTINGS

by Karen Marker

Hundreds of students walked off Oakland’s Skyline High School campus on Tuesday [November 18], calling for the school and district to do more to counter gun violence. They say the Oakland Unified School District needs to provide more education and better support for students who don’t feel safe on campus after shootings at two Oakland schools last week. Last Wednesday [November 12], a Skyline student was shot during the school day, and two other young people were arrested in connection with the altercation. Just a day later, Oakland’s beloved Laney College Athletic Director John Beam was shot and killed on the junior college campus. Beam, who was featured on the final season of Netflix’s docuseries Last Chance U while he was coaching the Laney Eagles, began his Oakland career at Skyline, leading the school’s football team to 15 championships over 17 years, according to OUSD Superintendent Denise Saddler. (Photo: Gustavo Hernandez/KQED) —KQED, November 18, 2025

I admit I am glad 
it’s no longer my job 
to be called out in a crisis—
part of the Response Team
at Skyline High, first to gather 
students together after 
the shooting, sit them 
in a circle so they can share 
feelings of shock 
between waves of grief 
and anger, between questions
about how much damage 
a ghost gun can do, 
how impossible 
to trace all this 
back to the beginnings
of neglected cries for help 
and so much hunger—
what was said on social media
no one warned about
those who knew the shooter
the student shot
the football coach
shot by a former student—
all those wondering 
where did we go wrong
how do we make our schools 
and city free of violence
would more mental health services 
solve the problems? For so many years 
I was out in the field offering solace, 
seeking solutions but tonight 
with no moon I’m seeing only the shooting 
of a star—the icon, hero coach 
is gone and all this
against the backdrop of news 
alerts from NextDoor 
please people be safe—
badgeless masked ICE agents, 
like ghost guns 
impossible to trace
are now active in neighborhoods 
all over the city we love
while I’m still reeling.

 

Karen Marker is an Oakland, CA. poet activist and retired school psychologist who has committed to  writing a poem a day of protest and hope in response  to current events. Her first poetry book Beneath the Blue Umbrella came out recently with Finishing Line Press and explores family mental illness, stigma and healing. 

DEAR JUDY

a duplex poem

by Trish Hopkinson

Today, a successful assassination

happened near where you last lived.

     In Utah, where I once lived with you

     a right-wing activist was shot dead.

In Evergreen, a school shooter was shot dead

on the same Wednesday in Colorado.

     It’s Wednesday in Utah and Colorado

     where I now live, 200 miles from the dead

no longer living: two men, shot dead,

two schoolchildren fatally wounded.

     This year, four kids dead, thirty-five wounded.

     They were not soldiers; they were students.

Murder on campus, witnessed by students,

no ear grazed: successful assassination.

Trish Hopkinson is a poet and advocate for the literary arts. You can find her online at SelfishPoet.com. Her poetry has been published in several literary magazines and journals; and her most recent book A Godless Ascends was published by Lithic Press in March 2024. Hopkinson happily answers to labels such as atheist, feminist, and empty nester; and enjoys traveling, live music, and craft beer.

AFTER SEEING “THE CRUCIBLE” PERFORMED BY STUDENTS OF SAN FRANCISCO CITY COLLEGE

by Lynne Barnes

I felt challenged at first

by the language of the play.

I came to it weary, exhausted really,

no fault of the author or actors.

 

It is just so troubling now, out here

in humanity’s sad tilt toward cruelty.

This weighs on us all,

whether we recognize it or not,

like a season of dreary weather.

 

Arthur Miller’s complex word tapestry,

and the actors embodying his characters,

took our minds deep inside the insanity

of the Salem Witch Trials

echoing McCarthy’s time, and

reflecting our present moment

in a stunning mirror of art.

 

My mask muffled an involuntary

keening sound as the curtain fell.

 

Oh, dear playwright, dear actors,

dear visual, verbal musicians,

you struck soul-deep,

vibrating our collective psyche

as your high notes of sorrow’s music

hit like a fist to our chests.

 

Afterward, as we mingle with the cast,

bees of gratitude fly from our lips,

swarm our senses, pollinate

our newly watered, unfolding,

buds of resilience.

Author’s Note: This poem came first, followed several weeks later by this news article out of my home state of Georgia. Since this is graduation month, I decided to send along my poem and the link to this article about the disappointed students, ironically victims of the kind of witch hunt mentality Arthur Miller depicted so enduringly in "The Crucible."

Silencing the Witches in Georgia High School ‘Crucible’: And so it seems that the play about witch hunts, about the persecution of people out of hysteria, despite being an acknowledged American classic widely taught in high school classrooms and performed frequently on high school stages, had provoked the same moral persecution it portrayed as unjust. —Howard Sherman, May 22, 2025

Lynne Barnes is a retired psychiatric nurse and librarian living in San Francisco. She is especially honored that two of her poems have appeared in the past in The New Verse News. Her poetry memoir, Falling into Flowers (Blue Light Press, 2017) was a finalist for the 2018 Eric Hoffer Book Award.

DECLARATION OF A TERRORIST

by Taylor Norris

Knee on a neck, 

Match poised to strike,

With a final exhale, 

Flames did ignite. 

 

A firestorm erupted,

Fervent movement did arise, 

Suffocated by a tsunami, 

Of "All Lives Matter" cries. 

 

Abusive power wears many masks, 

Yet speaks a single tongue,

A requiem of callousness, 

Tide of lives wrung.

 

Seized, silenced, deprived of voice, 

Crushed by tempest creed, 

As the faceless gasp for breath, 

Dragged beneath waves of greed.

 

Palestinians butchered by golem rampage, 

While leaders fiddle in their gilded bubble,

Israel's broken promises rain down,

As last dregs of conscience soak into the rubble.

 

Students denouncing genocide, 

Abducted off streets like trash,

Futures and rights vanished, 

Disappeared in a Gestapo flash.

 

Ukrainians in scorched ruins stand tall, 

Courage unwavering, despite the pain,

Their sacrifice met with jealous disdain,

As an American führer bows to Putin's reign.

 

Sudanese starve on apathy alone, 

Wasting away to hollow bone, 

While the privileged eat cake, 

Glutted, glued to their phone.

 

Immigrants condemned, banished beyond aid,

Hostages snatched to a circus cage,

Mercy extinguished; identity stripped,

Erased by those with contrived rage.

 

Tiny tots seen, once heard, now lost,

Voiceless, cast out with derision,

Birthright a farce, a due process mirage,

Dispelled with coldness and precision.

 

Judges defied, jailed with contempt, 

Justice held ransom, chained to the bell, 

As cracked scales teeter on the brink, 

Ears crane for liberty's death knell.

 

If my conviction of unity, 

Is intolerable sedition, 

Call me a TERRORIST, 

I embrace the affliction.

 

Truth-teller in an age of lies, 

Empathetic when compassion dies,

Revolutionary when liberties decline,

Relentless when cruelty is the infection by design,

Outspoken when silence is the golden law,

Resilient by refusing to withdraw,

Inclusive when others build walls of divide,

Solidarity with the denigrated caste aside,

Transformative in spirit that cannot abide.

 

The most sacred amendment, first on the parchment, 

Will withstand your calculated bombardment,

If TERRORIST I must be, in your criminalized fiction, 

I'll wear your pointy yellow badge with distinction.

 

While propaganda devours, 

Truth strikes with bolt and thunder, 

Electrified, embers take flight,

Defiance echoes, never again forced under.

Taylor Norris treads the thin verse between comfortable and the disturbed that can’t be unseen. In the stone age that was pre-y2k Taylor was a film critic for a LGBTQ publication and was published in two poetry anthologies with a poem translated for a Spanish newspaper. Taylor was also produced in Best Short-Lived 2.0 in San Francisco. After a long hiatus, she is returning back to her roots.

ENDANGERED SPECIES / WHAT DOES IT FEEL LIKE?

by Dick Altman

An Indonesian father of an infant with special needs, who was detained by federal agents at his hospital workplace in Minnesota after his student visa was secretly revoked, will remain in custody after an immigration judge ruled on Thursday that his case can proceed. The day before [Aditya Wahyu] Harsono’s bond hearing, DHS disclosed their evidence against him. Besides stating that his visa had been revoked for the misdemeanor graffiti conviction, for which he paid $100 in restitution, they also mentioned an arrest from 2021 during a protest over the murder of George Floyd. That charge was dismissed. Harsono is Muslim and frequently posts on social media in support of humanitarian relief for Gaza. He also runs a small non-profit, which sells art and merchandise, with proceeds going to organizations aiding Gaza. —The Guardian, April 29, 2025. Peyton Harsono (pictured above) and Madison Weidner have organized a GoFundMe to support Harsono’s family in these dark days.

I dream,

every now and then,

of an army newsreel

the colonel

across the street,

shows

two ten-year-olds,

his daughter and me.

We are old enough,

he says,

quoting Burns,

to witness “man’s

inhumanity to man,”

a phrase lost on us,

until he turns down

the basement lights,

and the 16-mm film

begins to unwind.

 

It opens

on a city street

of old buildings,

older than anything

I know of America.

The sidewalks busy

with baby carriages,

people shopping,

children skipping.

When,

out of a doorway,

two men abruptly

drag a man

into the street.

They punch him,

until he falls

to the ground,

and then begin

to kick him.

We can only stare.

The colonel,

as if reading

our minds,

says

they’re beating him

because he’s Jewish.

And the voiceover

starts to explain.

*

When I awaken,

my mind grinds

incessantly

on the words

endangered species.

Grinds on the video

of a woman in white—

a student protester

of foreign extraction,

here in America—

converged upon

by three men in black,

who arrest her.

A chilling reminder

of the colonel’s

newsreel.

Echoing

across the nation’s

landscape,

across mountain,

prairie and sea.

 

Endangered species.

My mind trembles

over the syllables,

as I imagine them

enclosing themselves

around the laws

and institutions

that nourish

and drive

our democracy.

 

Endangered species.

I strangle on the words,

here in Indian Country,

where a holocaust

nearly drove a people

into extinction.

We have a history,

I say to myself.

Can we,

as a nation,

change course?

I can almost

imagine

a raging knock

at the door,

as I write.

“You and

your words—

they’re coming

with us,”

I hear

a voice yell.

 

And I think

of the eyes

that might read

these thoughts.

And of the lines

and lives

that didn’t survive

during

and between

last century’s

Great Wars.

And I confess—

I fear those eyes.

 

 

Dick Altman writes in the thin, magical air of Old West’s high desert plains, where, at 7,000 feet, reality and imagination often blur. He is published in the American 

Journal of Poetry, Santa Fe Literary Review, Fredericksburg Literary Review, Foliate Oak, Landing Zone, Cathexis Northwest Press, Humana Obscura, Haunted Waters Press,

Split Rock Review, The Ravens Perch, Beyond Words, and others here and abroad. His work also appears in the first edition of The New Mexico Anthology of Poetry, published by the New Mexico Museum Press. Pushcart Prize nominee and poetry winner of Santa Fe New Mexican’s annual literary competition, he has authored some 250 poems, published on four continents.

WE'RE SITTING AROUND A TABLE NOT FAR FROM THE RUSSIAN BORDER

by Ron Riekki

A Chinese artist, a Russian musician, and American poet,

and we talk about surveillance, sharing how dangerous it is

to be an artist, after speaking with a local who told us about

the tensions with Russia, how they're like a choking fog,

and the musician from Russia says it's all propaganda there,

says she doesn't care, that her voice will never be voiceless,

tells us about being taken in by the Russian police and how

she brutalized them with truth, was let go, and then let go

of her country, emigrating, immigrating, Euro-ricocheting around,

and hanging out with Pussy Riot, doing anti-war campaigns,

and we speak of the ten percent of the Russian population

being tortured, and she speaks of physical torture and

emotional torture and the torture of propaganda, and

the Chinese artist talks about holding up signs in Hong

Kong that were all white, not allowed to have signs with

actual words, so this haunting image, this effective image

of hundreds of artists and writers and protestors and students

holding up these white signs, ghost signs meant to haunt

politicians, and the American poet talks about being hunted

by the Trump administration for a pro-Islamic, pro-immigrant

tweet, how the administration administered paperwork to his

home, pages and pages and pages of warning, how watched

we are everywhere, he says, he thinks, he feels, and we are

near the Russian border, except it's shut down, too dangerous,

and here we are, doing art that is too dangerous, and having

this conversation that is too dangerous, so dangerous that

we turn off our phones to make sure we are not being listened

to, because we want to create the form of our words, rush

home and turn our conversations into lyrics and artwork

and this poem you are reading now, written near a border

that is rotting with worry, a border that lacks moonlight tonight.

Ron Riekki co-edited Undocumented: Great Lakes Poets Laureate on Social Justice.