INTERVAL

by Rajat Chandra Sarmah 

They said

this is your moment.

So we sat—

a few rows in—

watching

democracy

adjust its lights.

Promises entered first.

Well-dressed.

Fluent.

They spoke

in our language—

better than we do, sometimes.

Jobs arrived next—

counted aloud,

like blessings

no one stopped to check.

Cash followed quietly.

No speeches.

Just something understood

without being said.

We clapped.

Not loudly—

just enough.

Somewhere between

need

and negotiation,

we stopped thinking too much

about what was ours

and what was being offered.

The button—

small,

decisive,

mercifully simple.

Press.

Nothing to show later.

Interval.

Lights dim.

Noise settles

somewhere behind us.

When the curtain lifts again,

the stage is lighter.

Fewer promises.

Some things

just not there this time.

What was announced

comes back

“under process.”

What was certain

slows down—

then disappears.

We do not protest.

We adjust.

Survival stretches itself

over the years.

Dignity—

it comes and goes.

Outside,

the posters fade first.

Inside,

something follows.

Next election,

they will return—

with improved scripts,

cleaner numbers,

and our own words

borrowed again.

And we—

seasoned audience,

repeat believers—

will take our seats

before the lights come on.

No one will ask

what the first show changed.

No one will ask

why we stayed.

The applause will begin

on time.

And we will give it—

not because we believe,

not because we forgot,

but because

we have learned.

Rajat Chandra Sarmah is a poet and writer based in India. After a 36-year career in India’s power sector, he now focuses on literary writing. His work explores public memory, environmental crisis, social change, and everyday human endurance. His poetry has previously appeared in The New Verse News and other international journals.

BREADCRUMBS IN A NATION OF LOAVES

by Jazmine Crandall 

 

 

The economic fallout of the US-Israeli assault and Tehran’s retaliation is spreading fast, and pushing the most vulnerable towards disaster. —The Guardian, March 12, 2026 

 

In the marble halls where voices echo  
like coins dropped into deep, indifferent wells, 
they debate the price of labor 
as though it were a frivolous shadow; 
weightless, distant, theoretical. 

Outside, the morning opens its weary eyes. 

A banker straightens his Hermes tie 
that costs more than a week of someone's rent. 
His salary is quite the dome; 
built stone by stone, pension and bonus, 
arches of security rising 
towards stained-glass futures. 

A manager clocks in, 
midway up the ladder of breathing space. 
Her wages are a narrow bridge—
not golden, not broken,  
but sturdy enough to cross the river of bills 
if the current stays calm. 

And then there is the worker 
whose hands smell of fryer oil and sanitizer, 
whose chapped palms hold the ghosts  
of a thousand barcodes, 
and ears fatigue of a million complaints. 

Their meager wage is a candle in winter. 

Each hour they feed the flame, 
yet the room refuses to grow warm. 

And no one says the quiet truth aloud: 
this fire was never meant to heat the house. 

It was meant to prove endurance. 

So the worker learns the mathematics of survival—
how many hours equal a gallon of milk  
and a carton of eggs, 
how many aching hours on torn soles 
and blistered toes equal rent, 
how many meals must disappear 
so the light bill does not. 


Jazmine Crandall is a Colombian-Cuban poet in Atlanta, Georgia. She's beginning her journey of sharing her poetry and strives to make a difference. Her work explores feminism, inequality, and the struggles of immigrants and the working class, using her writing to advocate for marginalized voices.

WE CROSSED

by Zebo Zukhriddinova 

 

 

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

 

I want to speak loud enough for the child who 

packed a suitcase bigger than their arms,


for the teenager who learned the word visa before 

they learned how to drive,


for the mother who ironed hope into a shirt at 3 a.m. before a flight that smelled like goodbye.

I want to speak the way drums speak in a stadium,


the way a voice echoes under bright lights like it refuses to disappear,


the way someone stands at a microphone and 

says:


we are still here.

We did not leave because we hated home.


We left because we loved it too much


to watch it close its doors on our future.

We left because dreams were heavier than fear,


because opportunity whispered louder than 

comfort,


because sometimes survival is not dramatic—


it is paperwork, it is embassy lines, it is a number blinking above a counter


where someone decides if your life may continue.

We learned how to pronounce ourselves again.


We learned that “Where are you from?” can be 

curiosity


or it can be a cage.


We learned to laugh at jokes about our accents


while secretly holding our language like a fragile heirloom


we refuse to drop.

They say immigrant like it is a shadow.


Like it is something that sneaks.


Like it is something that takes.

But we are not shadows—


we are sunrise workers, late-night students,


we are the hands that build and the minds that

 innovate,


we are the children who translate bills at the 

kitchen table


while finishing homework about a history that forgot to mention us.

We crossed oceans, yes—


but mostly we crossed versions of ourselves.


We crossed from who we were told to be


into who we dared to imagine.

And if you ask what we carried,


it was not just luggage.

We carried recipes memorized by heart.


We carried songs our grandmothers hummed 

while sweeping.


We carried photographs folded at the corners


from being opened too often in dorm rooms


where homesickness sounds like silence.

We carried love.

Love stronger than border walls.


Love louder than speeches soaked in fear.


Love stubborn enough to bloom in foreign winters
and call it spring.

Because hate is loud—


it chants, it points, it builds fences out of words —


but love is louder in the long run.


Love studies for exams in a second language.


Love sends money back home.


Love stands in graduation gowns and whispers,


“We made it.”

To the ones who left young—


who traded playgrounds for airports,


who learned currency exchange before algebra,


who grew up between time zones—


this is for you.

You are not “temporary.”


You are not “other.”


You are not a debate.

You are the proof


that hope can pack a suitcase


and still make room for courage.

And one day, when they ask what immigration 

looks like,


tell them it looks like a child refusing to shrink their dream


to fit inside a border.

Tell them it looks like love


walking through customs


with nothing to declare


except a future.

Zebo Zukhriddinova  is an international student currently studying in the United Kingdom.