NO ONE SEES THE SUNRISE

by Sharon Neubauer

AI-generated image by Nightcafé for The New Verse News

One of the oddest UN resolutions in history seeks to solidify shaky Gaza ceasefire into an enduring peace: The hazy UN resolution dictates that Trump’s ‘board of peace’ will supervise an International Stabilisation Force, whose membership is as yet undetermined. —The Guardian, November 18, 2025

I

I do not want to live

in a kill or be killed world.

It is not refreshing

 

that for once

my people are killers

and not just killed

 

and if they stop killing

they will once again

be killed, and if 

 

they keep killing

they may kill the current killers

only to create new killers.

 

II

 

I want to live

in a love and be loved world

in a forgive and move on world

 

that makes space 

for my people

and in which my people 

 

make space for all.

There is no pathway 

to this world

 

that I can see

and many who have tried

to pave that path have been killed.

 

III

 

The sun comes up through the smog.

The killers and the killed

don’t stop to say good morning

 

Sunlight tries to enter

their eyes, ears and hearts

through closed portals

 

and trauma blocks the path

over and over, as it has

always.

 

IV

 

The grieving mothers remember 

God is the power 

to see, hear, and listen 

 

with all our might, soul and being.

But as the sun rises 

both sides toil at their killing

 

and the babies starve 

and the girls are raped

and the world picks sides 

 

and accusations abound

and no one sees the sun rise

shining its sweet rays through the smoke,

and no one lets in the light 

that burns off hatred and sorrow

and tries every day to clean the world.

Sharon Neubauer is a poet, singer, Yoga teacher, and skier. Her poetry chapbook A Work of Body: A Body of Work was published in 2023 by Finishing Line Press.

EMPTY SPACES

by Adam Bagdasarian

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

There is no pill or drink for this

No pill for the rubble of home

for the dust of flesh

the ash of bone

No drink for the season-less years—

for the trees, for the water

the sunlight one cannot feel

or the empty plate of the evening meal

Each new day comes D.O.A.

rewound, somehow and replayed

rewound and played

rewound, replayed

Adam Bagdasarian’s Forgotten Fire was a finalist for the 2000 National Book Award. In 2002,  First French Kiss and Other Traumas was a finalist for the ALA Top Ten Best Books for Young Adults.

FOOL'S GOLD

by Ann E. Wallace

Reckitt Benckiser, the maker of UK cleaning brand Dettol and US brand Lysol, issued stark advice to consumers on Friday, saying it had a responsibility to help with myth-busting: “As a global leader in health and hygiene products, we must be clear that under no circumstance should our disinfectant products be administered into the human body,” it said in a statement on its website.

The president wondered today
if we might wipe out the pandemic
with disinfectant, like we swipe
over doorknobs and countertops,
sprayed inside our bodies, or
tremendous amounts of light.

Today was the day that my oxygen
tank was brought to my doorstep
by a man who could not enter
my infected home, could not step
past the tub of chlorine bleach wipes
that I leave outside my door for cleaning.

Tomorrow, may I wake rested, my blood
replenished, fortified and ready to lay waste
to the virus running loose within me,
and may I not read of devout red, white,
and blue Americans newly dead and dying,
cleansed with the bright light of fool’s gold.

Ann E. Wallace is writing poetry and teaching her college classes from home in Jersey City, NJ while she recovers from COVID-19. Her poetry collection Counting by Sevens (2019) is available from Main Street Rag. She is on Twitter @annwlace409.

LOCKDOWN

by Rick Mullin

“Hokusai Meets Fibonacci with Numerical Sequence” by Ars Brevis

We did this to ourselves, we say. The sirens
rise and fall disparaging the soul.
Alarms are nothing new in these environs,
but the silence in between them takes its toll.
We did this to ourselves, we tell ourselves
in voices silent as the thoroughfares,
not understanding how, but understanding.
We sense a culmination. Our affairs
are not in order. We aren’t cleared for landing
in our soundless silver aircraft as it shelves
in clouds above the towers of Manhattan.
The numbers coming down are a distraction
as the news rolls in a Fibonacci pattern.
The mounting body count is an abstraction.
The sunlight in the courtyard overwhelms.


Rick Mullin's newest poetry collection is Lullaby and Wheel.

REVERSALS

by Terese Coe

In loss is meaning,

in emptiness, seed,

in ruin, a mirror

of wholeness and deed. 

A seed reserves need

and comes to birth

in the presence of water

and sunlight and earth.

And well we may wonder

when there is no birth

when there is no water

what life has been worth.

Terese Coe’s poems and translations have appeared in 32 Poems, Alaska Quarterly Review, The Cincinnati Review, New American Writing, Ploughshares, Poetry, Threepenny Review, Agenda, The Moth, New Walk Magazine, New Writing Scotland, Poetry Review, the TLS, The Stinging Fly, and many other publications and anthologies. Her latest collection Shot Silk was nominated for The Poets Prize of 2017.

APPROACHING CERES

by Geoffrey A. Landis

This image was taken by NASA's Dawn spacecraft of dwarf planet Ceres on Feb. 19 from a distance of nearly 29,000 miles (46,000 kilometers). It shows that the brightest spot on Ceres has a dimmer companion, which apparently lies in the same basin. Image Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/UCLA/MPS/DLR/IDA

dimpled spinning ball
ice in bottoms of craters
glints bright in sunlight


Geoffrey A. Landis is a scientist, a science fiction writer, and a poet. As a scientist, he works at NASA John Glenn Research Center on developing new technology for space.  As a science fiction writer, he's written one novel and over fifty short stories, winning the Hugo and Nebula awards. As a poet, he has written numerous poems, including this one.