THE SIREN SONG OF TRUTH

by Robin Stevens Payes

Believe women. Believe girls.

The women, the girls know.
Our story ancient. Our voices new.

They make us believe
The crime is our fault.
Men take our bodies,
Unable to resist the siren
Song of our bodies.

The song of our bodies
Does not belong to us.
Girls whom men called sirens,
Children wounded into silence,
Sing their bodies.

Sing their truths aloud.
Strongmen claim they are victims
Of the song of our bodies.
Weak men whose bodies
Are out of control.

Bodies anatomically ungoverned.
Bluster out of control.
Vanquishing other bodies—
Seas, straits, oil fields,
Mines, minds.

Strap yourselves tighter to the mast.
Now the bindings break.
Your strength offers no protection
Against the siren song of Truth.
The women. The girls. Know.

Mother Earth sings Her body,
Raped by weak men
Whose strength is measured
In violence. Did their mothers
Teach them this was fair game?

We sing our truths aloud,
Sirens flashing red:
Pull over now. Stop raping
Our minds, our bodies,
Our mothers, our daughters.

Ourselves. Loudly we sing
Our bodies to wholeness.
Weak men are broken,
No fault of ours.
Blame your wounds, not our anatomy.

Our siren song strengthens.
Our story ancient.
Our voices new.

Believe us.

Robin Stevens Payes is a Pushcart Prize–nominated poet, storyteller, and cultural steward whose work braids ancestral memory, science, myth, and moral imagination. She is the author of the YA time-travel adventure series Edge of Yesterday and creator of [re]member the world, a multi-genre project retrieving and reweaving the silenced history of her grandmother’s flight from Ukraine’s Pale of Settlement. Her poetry has appeared in The New Verse News, Dawn Horizons, East Sea Bards, Maryland Bards, Poetry Reviews, and Reflections. She writes about creative ethics, generational healing, and cultural repair on her Substack, Releasing Memory. 

NO. NO.

by Nan Meneely

 

 

This protest was regional, the work of dedicated leadership in several small Connecticut towns. A group of somewhere between 20 and 30 or 40 people of all stripes, races and ages (and signs) gathered outside a café where three local roads collide, every single Saturday morning from the one directly following Trump's first election for more than four years. Nan's sign read "Honk Against Hatred;" the vigil was supposed to be silent, but she was unable to restrain her shouted thanks for every honk. This is a picture of one of the first meetings, with the central sign that was reproduced after the first and larger one was defaced.

2016
We hold a protest silently with signs 
that welcome all who worship other gods.
A pickup ploughs the shoulder 
where we stand, kicks gravel as it stops.
We back up quiet, listening. A man in camo, 
raging, crying, leans across his passenger 
to scream his epithets: ignorant fuckers,  
we don't know shit of the animals we invite.
Who of us has watched a friend
disintegrate, arms and legs no more
than shrapnel in a blazing Afghan sky?
His mind is full of massacre.
He loved. He hates.

I want to climb in next to him,
hold him in my Nana arms until he stills.
I've heard his wounds before.
My husband keened in nightmare
when he found again among the vines
of Vietnam his comrade's boots
with nothing of his comrade but his feet.
 
I know my luck that I don’t know.
Even as the soldier curses me
in his convulsive bitterness,
I want to love him back 
from where he lives. 

2026
Ignorant fuckers, haven't you learned 
you kill the ones who survive ?

 
Nan Meneely’s first book Letter from Italy, 1944 (Antrim House) was noted by the Hartford Courant as one of thirteen important books by Connecticut writers in 2013. It provided the libretto for an oratorio of the same name, composed by Sarah Meneely-Kyder and performed twice by Connecticut choruses and symphony orchestras. Her second book Simple Absence (Antrim House) was nominated for The National Book Award and placed as a grand prize finalist in The Next Generation Indie Awards and the 2021 Eric Hoffer Award. She has been published and rejected by The New Verse News.

IS IT ABOUT THE SURVIVORS OR ABOUT THE TAO?

by Raymond Nat Turner

“Laws grind the poor and rich men rule the law”

 — Oliver Goldsmith

“What does the Tao have to do with anything? Are you kidding?”

Epstein-class—pedophile protectors—RICCO racketeers agree 

to pee on survivors. Deploy entire capitalist state apparatus coming 

at us: D. C., Cali, Chicago, Pacific, Caribbean, Canada, Greenland!

Depends on nothing, does not change 

operates everywhere, free from danger

Mother- of the universe—We didn’t have

a name for it—but she called it the Tao.

Keeps to the Mother-  fed by the Mother-

source of all being; life and death are the

same—We didn’t have

a name for it—but she called it the Tao.

Multiple meanings include ‘way,’ ‘path,’ ‘road,’

‘doctrine,’ ‘principle.’ Undifferentiated, yet complete.

soundless, formless, existing before heaven and earth—

We didn’t have a name for it—but she called it the Tao.

Kamikaze pilot crashing into committee hearing—burn

book in hand. Firing triggering rounds at survivors’ scars;

bootlicking, brown-nosing, on behalf of apex predators—

We didn’t have a name for it—but she called it the Tao.

 

Talentless student of Theatre of the Absurd, contesting every word—

stonewalling, gaslighting, sowing wild quotes, burn book notes at 

child scapegoats, like secondhand smoke—

We didn’t have a name for it—but she called it the Tao.

Ball-less Roy Cohn. Consigliere believing JD’s Junkyard Dog,

rather than Juris Doctor. Degree granted by corrupt, defunct

university of sole client?—We didn’t have a name for it— 

but she called it the Tao.

What does it take to get a disbarment date in the Sunshine State?

Empire State disbarred J6-inciter, election worker-harasser, Count

Ghouliani. Golden State disbarred loony theorist, J6-agitator and

former Thom-ass Clarence law clerk, Eastman …  And some say 

MAGA means Make Attorneys Go Away—

We didn’t have a name for it—but she called it the Tao.

Raymond Nat Turner is a NYC poet; Black Agenda Report's Poet-in-Residence; and founder/co-leader of the jazz-poetry ensemble UpSurge!NYC.

BRANKS

by Julie Steiner

Images of Epstein victims as depicted in Feb. 8, 2026, Super Bowl ad. Image of branks from an oil painting by John Willie, pseudonym for John Alexander Scott Coutts, for Bizarre, a sadomasochism magazine published 1946–1959. Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.

Brank/branks: A device formerly used to punish women judged to be noisy and quarrelsome, consisting of an iron curb for the tongue, held in place by a frame around the head. Also called a scold’s bridle.


You have to tell the truth, but tell it slant.
To lay it bare’s unbearable. You’ve tried.
You’d like to leave it buried, but you can’t.

Too few have cared to hear a woman rant
since Homer (“Sing, O Muse, of anger”) died.
You have to tell the truth; but tell it slant,

since, frankly, even Keats would have to grant
this truth’s no beauty. This, you’ve had to hide.
You’d like to leave it buried. But you can’t,

so Dickinson’s advice is relevant.
She’ll be your Virgil, your inferno-guide.
You have to “Tell [...] the truth, but tell it slant— ”

“Tell all the truth.” But don’t get adamant,
“Or every man be blind—,” she qualified.
You’d like to leave it bare. (Read: But you can’t.)

Loud girls get label-gagged: once, Termagant,

Virago, Shrew; now, Bitch. Take that in stride.

(You have, to tell the truth.) But tell it—slant

or no—you must. Omit the bitter. Scant
the pathos. Cut the caustic. Snip the snide.
(You’d like to leave it, buried.) But you can’t

accuse the rich of rape, or lawyers chant,

“No, he’s the victim! She’s a slut who lied.”

You have to tell the truth, but tell it slant.
You’d like to leave it buried. But you can’t.

Julie Steiner is a pseudonym in San Diego, California. Besides The New Verse News, recent venues in which Julie's poetry has appeared include the Ekphrastic Review, Light, Lighten Up Online, and Snakeskin. See more on her Substack, Off-Piste on Mount Parnassus.

HEGSETH THE ADOLESCENT

by Sharon Olson

Source: Autodesk Instructables

Senator Mark Kelly: "He runs around on stage talking about 'lethality,' warrior ethos, and 'killing people'... that’s not the message that should be coming from the Secretary of Defense… And instead he runs around on a stage like he’s a 12 year old playing army." —Yahoo!News, December 2, 2025

Before computer games, we each chose

a sheaf of white paper, scoring it with lines

going this way and that, and assigned letters

and numbers so each square would be, for 

example, B1 or D2, and then we specified 

where our boats hung out, be they cruiser, 

submarine, destroyer, carrier or battleship. 

You only called out one square at a time 

and one hit could not sink a ship. 

There were no sailors on these ships, 

the losses not serious, the arsenal only 

pen marks on a grid. But armed with a 

computer now the tempo rises, especially

when it's the War Department striking

in the Caribbean, no marimba music or 

swaying palms, a techno-hit in a made-up 

war can end the game, but if survivors cling 

to the side, no need to ask mother's permission, 

we double-tap and send them on their way.

Sharon Olson is a retired librarian and native Californian who now lives in Annapolis, Maryland. Her book The Long Night of Flying was published by Sixteen Rivers Press in 2006. Her second book Will There Be Music? was published by Cherry Grove Collections in 2019.

ACCEPTABLE LEVELS OF CRUELTY, STEADILY RISING

by Gordon Gilbert

In the not-so-distant past,
genocidal acts, a holocaust,
distant from our shores,
rumoured only, but for most unseen,
finally revealed in retrospect
indelibly to soldiers’ eyes,
brought home in photographs,
not to be denied.
 
Ah, we said, if only… If only…
But we did not know
at the time, only later,
and alas, too late to do
what we surely would have done
had we only known…
 
But now this genocide comes to us live,
like a fog slowly lifting, revealing
the landscapes of barbarity:
bombs falling; the destruction of
homes & neighborhoods,
schools & hospitals,
mosques & churches;
the death of civilians—
babies,  children,  women,  men;
the cries and wails of those
(for now) still alive.
 
Survivors,
searching in the rubble for those they lost.
We know this time. 
We cannot say we do not know. 

Editor's note: The title of this poem is a line from “To the Days” by Adrienne Rich.


Gordon Gilbert is a writer living in NYC's west village.  During the pandemic, he often found solace and an inner sense of peace by taking walks along the nearby Hudson River; now he does so as unwilling witness to the ongoing genocide in Gaza. 

HELPLESS

by Anne Harding Woodworth

Support the rescue efforts of the White Helmets.

     a prayer of sorts, Tuesday, February 7, 2023, 4:30 a.m.

In the quiet of this early morning, he’s left our bed

and walked into the hall, then to the kitchen

 

probably to get a “swig of klim,” as he calls it.

I move my foot over to his side just to feel the warmth

he’s left behind. At that moment, I know how survivors

in Turkey and Syria are shivering, reaching for warmth

where there is none, no lingering vestige of a spouse,

parent, child, no body next to them that said, “I’ll be right back.”

Buildings have fallen, din deafened, and then silent,

as snow passes into illicit spaces, upside down rooms,

and chairs drop into cold chasms of confusion,

terror, and pain with no one there to explain

what has happened. This is nightmare, a woman thinks,

held down in darkness between two concrete blocks

with one leg bent the wrong way. I tell her I am coming

with a blanket and lamp, but that too is dream

and will never happen. When he comes back to bed,

sweet-smelling of milk, I move closer to him

for his warmth, seeking comfort and more air

for those still breathing, buried deep in the rubble.

Anne Harding Woodworth is the author of eight books of poetry and four chapbooks. Her recent collection is GENDER: Two Novellas in Verse, which was a Literary Titan Silver Award Winner. Her chapbook The Last Gun won the COG Poetry Award and was subsequently animated (at https://vimeo.com/193842252). Anne is a member of the Board of Governors at the Emily Dickinson Museum in Amherst, MA, which is opening soon after two years of restoration.

MAYFIELD

by Donna Katzin

In this photo taken by a drone, buildings are demolished in downtown Mayfield, Ky., on Saturday, Dec. 11, 2021, after a tornado traveled through the region Friday night. Ryan C. Hermens/Lexington Herald-Leader via AP

Where cold and warming winds collide,

twisters—minions of an angry earth—                    

lash out in pain, flatten farms, homes,

houses of work and worship in their paths.

As roofs rain bricks in darkness,                               

mothers, fathers, sons, daughters,

sisters, brothers sit in cellars,                                               

making calls never returned.

 

When the wild ones have gone, survivors pick

through mauled metal, shredded remains.       

A bus lies on its back—a turtle shell

with the body sucked out.

Splintered ghost trunks rise  

like hands to heaven.

There are no voices now.

Even wind has no words.

 

Cadaver dogs sniff through rubble.

Crews root around the clock

for what is left of men and women

who worked the late shift,

even after alarms screamed,

for twelve dollars an hour

making candles to light consumers’ holidays       

at the factory now extinguished.                   

 

On Sunday morning, faithful gather,

console and hold each other,

interrogate the Almighty,

sing hymns of hope

to staunch despair.  

A few pray for the mother

planet we torture at our own peril—

who will not be patient forever.

 

 

Donna Katzin is the founding and previous executive director of Shared Interest, a fund that mobilizes the human and financial resources of low-income communities of color in South and Southern Africa.  A board member of Community Change in the U.S., and co-coordinator of Tipitapa Partners working in Nicaragua, she has written extensively about South Africa, community development and impact investing.  Published in journals and sites including The New Verse News and The Mom Egg, she is the author of With the Hands, a book of poems and photographs about post-apartheid South Africa’s process of giving birth to itself.

TRAGEDY IN [...]

by Devon Balwit

Lebanese security forces confronted protesters during clashes in downtown Beirut on Saturday, following a demonstration against political leaders blamed for a deadly explosion in the city. Credit: Agence France-Presse—Getty Images via The New York Times, August 9, 2020

The United States is becoming like Lebanon and other Middle East countries in two respects. First, our political differences are becoming so deep that our two parties now resemble religious sects in a zero-sum contest for power. They call theirs “Shiites and Sunnis and Maronites” or “Israelis and Palestinians.” We call ours “Democrats and Republicans,” but ours now behave just like rival tribes who believe they must rule or die. And second, as in the Middle East, so increasingly in America: Everything is now politics—even the climate, even energy, even face masks in a pandemic. 

—Thomas Friedman, The New York Times, August 9, 2020

How does a city fall, how does a nation?
A raft of catastrophe floats in & is lashed
to a bollard & then forgotten, pleas for attention
ignored or handed on, fears quashed

beneath derision. Those at the helm creep
away in the dark after pocketing what they can.
Those who cannot leave tremble at the seep
of decay & instability, hoping to withstand

the blast that finally comes. Many won’t.
Their names will be added to a list, misspelled,
the list lost, their ashes scattered amidst
a hundred thousand livelihoods propelled

into calamity. Then, blistering recrimination
& grim survivors doing what must be done.


Devon Balwit's most recent collection is titled A Brief Way to Identify a Body (Ursus Americanus Press). Her individual poems can be found in here as well as in Jet Fuel, The Worcester Review, The Cincinnati Review, Tampa Review, Apt (long-form issue), Tule Review, Grist, and Rattle among others.

HISTORY

by Howard Winn

A D-Day commemoration on the beach of Arromanches in France on June 6, 2019, marking the 75th anniversary of the Allied landings in Normandy in World War II. (Joel Saget/Getty-AFP via Chicago Tribune)

of D Day by genetic fate

there is no escape

is where I find myself

with only three percent left

it seems The Greatest Generation

labeled by that newsman who

needed a catchy concept to draw

his audience for the news of the day

when other networks stood ready 

to step in to alter the ratings so

he found the catchy concept for

the mostly children drafted some 

out of high school to be the new

war heroes even though the survivors

kept quiet about their sacrifices 

often with loss of limbs

they were as voiceless as the bodies

buried in those field of crosses in

France where the living might 

have found them selves if they

were as unlucky as those who

survived to become portrayed in

the films of the next life leaving

today only the three percent who

movies seem to give permission to

recount the history they had kept

secret about until the later wars

involving their children gave some

permission to reveal fears and cruelty

for those survivors once silent veterans 

of that conflict between the dead and 

the emotionally quiet and silent for

history to become reality not just story

Howard Winn publishes widely in literary journals such as the Hiram Poetry Review and Valley Voices Journal. His novel has been published by Propertius Press.

RULING CLASS

by George Held

Left: Cameron Kasky, Photograph by Rhona Wise / AFP / Getty via The New Yorker, Feb. 23, 2018.
Right: Bethany Garrison, Photograph by Sharif Hamza, The New Yorker, Mar, 26, 2018.

The Parkland Kids have made
the cover of TIME: new
icons of a teen-mad age,
out to change the world,
or at least U.S. gun laws.

There’s barefoot Jaclyn,
buzzcut Emma, and the boys:
Alex Wind, Cameron Kasky,
and David Hogg, chairs of the board
of The Stoneman Douglas Survivors

and so far Kevlar impervious
to competitive envy,
so far without endorsements
(will they appear in ads
as a group or individuals?).

Even their motto, “Never
Again,” has brought no protest
from those who use it to resist
the Shoah: Whose slogan is it?
Which will happen again first?

But the Survivors’ suburban faces
ricochet off the teens with guns
in the pages of The New Yorker:
rural, poised, resolute, responsible
owners of shotguns, handguns, AR 16’s,

practicing where “shooting
felt as common as skateboarding.”
Whichever side you choose,
Americans, how will you accommodate
both law-abiding groups?


George Held, a longtime contributor to TheNewVerse.News, writes from New York. His twentieth collection is Dog Hill Poems (Seattle, 2017).

ME TOO WHO

by Rebecca Street

How can it be a little lass of nine

Should feel such guilt and fear the threat of hell?

Too young to name his cruelty a crime

Too damaged and coerced to ever tell.

Me too

Time’s up

So what

Shut up

Rosy cheeked girl who works to find a way

For her sweet child to have a better life

Could not afford to lose her job that day

Besides her mother’s cousin is his wife.

Me too

Time’s up

So what

Shut up

The bashful boy with pimples on his face

Could run like lightening so his coach did say

This dear one’s "yes sir" followed every race

With sleepless nights and silent tears by day.

Me too

Time’s up

So what

Shut up

Will justice for the few forever reign

While numerous nameless suffer such pain?

Rebecca Street is the author of You Can Help: A Guide for Family & Friends of Survivors of Sexual Abuse and Assault and the online program for survivors You Are Not Alone. She is also an actor and a poet. She has addressed both lay people and professionals at a wide variety of venues including the NY Office of Mental Health, the Fordham Graduate School of Social Work, and the University of CA., Santa Barbara. On April 4, she will be the keynote speaker for "Take Back The Night" at The Juilliard School.

T***P ADDRESSES THE SURVIVORS

by Earl J Wilcox

Thank you all for coming.
It’s so good to see such a great crowd,
especially those of you in pajamas,
without food, but carrying your pets,
and those who came wading or boating
in hip-deep waters, such a sacrifice, and
I am so pleased to see you old folks carrying
your meds, particularly one old grandma,
what a trooper you are granny,
to come all this way to see me here.
This morning, Melania and I are so thrilled
with this great turnout, your happy, smiling
faces, cheering us on. Truly we all—men and
women and children and dogs and cats, the
lame, the sick and frightened, such beautiful
faces—all are making America great again!
Thank you all for coming to see me.


Earl J. Wilcox, once a graduate student in Texas, lives now in SC, sends his best thoughts to his Texas friends enduring the heavy Harvey rains.

MY QUESTIONS FOR ANY WOMAN WHO HAS ESCAPED FROM HUMAN TRAFFICKING

by Sister Lou Ella Hickman

Advertising campaigtn by Greg Wong for Restore NYC - Awareness for Sex-Trafficked Survivors

In honor of Restore NYC and all places of haven.

                                will you learn to love your skin again
                                 now scarred and scared
                                will the memory in your muscles
                                  relearn how to let go in trust
                                will your eyes come to understand
                                  that your tears
                               your weeping, your sobbing
                                 are prayers releasing your heart from horror
                             will your feet discover again the way
                                 the way a woman walks into life each day
                                and, finally, will your sacred breasts and womb
                                                realize again how they temple your soul
                                these are the questions only you can answer
                                                with a life that came back from the dead

                                             

Sister Lou Ella Hickman, I.W.B.S. published her first book of poetry, she: robed and wordless in 2015 (Press 53).  She has published numerous poems in Spiritus, Commonweal, First Things, and Sojourners. One of her poems appeared in After Shocks: The Poetry of Recover for Life-Shattering Events edited by Tom Lombardo and one in Down to the Dark River: Contemporary Poems about the Mississippi, edited by Philip C. Kolin and Jack B. Bedell.  She lives in Corpus Christi, Texas and she is also a spiritual advisor.

GEOGRAPHY IS FATE

by George Held

            For Shereen Tan

There you are on Facebook,

hiking the Valois with your darling

Tootsie on her leash:

the brown grass is dry and it’s fall

and the scenic mountain

on the horizon has only a cap

of snow and it’s fall all over

the northern latitudes

while in Tacloban a vomitous

stench chokes the typhoon

survivors as they drag their starving

thirst-clenched bodies

and strangled souls past bloated

corpses toward the supply copters

landing another mile ahead, toward

the endless lines at the aeroport,

toward the makeshift morgues,

praying for relief, for escape,  

for the chance to identify

Maricel’s or Mama’s body,

all untethered by fate,

while harried tourists rush

to change their destination

From Manila to Geneva.


An occasional contributor to The New Verse News, George Held occasionally blogs at www.georgeheld.blogspot.com