MANIFESTO OF AN ANGRY LIBERAL

by Alex Silvestri

Love your neighbor.

Even the loud one with the truck flags and no brake lights.

Even the banker.

Even the bureaucrat.

Even the kid at the drive-thru who got your order wrong again.

Pay your taxes,

but don’t forget to ask

why billionaires don’t.

Plant tomatoes.

Support public schools.

Wave at the mail carrier.

Vote.

Raise your kids to tell the truth,

then tell them why the world sometimes punishes people who do.

Don’t let that make them bitter.

Let it make them brave.

Live as if healthcare were a right.

Live as if no one should die of a treatable disease

in the richest country on Earth.

Live as if your neighbor’s insulin is your business.

(It is.)

Stand up for public libraries.

For school lunches.

For clean water.

For the kid who comes out in a small town.

For the mother who can’t afford day care.

For the dad who took a second job to afford rent.

For the old man choosing between heat and food.

Get mad.

But not so mad you stop seeing people.

Especially the ones who disagree with you.

Listen longer than is comfortable.

Then speak clearly, without apology:

No, I don’t believe poor people are lazy.

Yes, I think workers deserve a living wage.

No, I don’t think guns are more sacred than children.

Yes, I believe Black lives matter.

No, I don’t think being queer is a threat to anyone’s freedom.

Yes, I think women are people.

No, I don’t think corporations should write our laws.

Yes, I still believe in democracy, even when it’s messy.

Protect the wild things:

the wetlands, the whistleblowers,

the bees, the books they try to ban.

Refuse cruelty,

even when it’s dressed in law.

Refuse greed,

even when it calls itself freedom.

Refuse hate,

even when it wears a flag.

Don’t just resist.

Build.

Build coalitions.

Build gardens.

Build unions.

Build broadband in the holler.

Build policy with working people in the room.

Don’t get cynical.

Cynicism is a luxury belief.

Hope is cheaper, but costs more effort.

Hope plants itself anyway.

So should you.

Love the country like you’d love a sick child—

not blindly,

but with everything you’ve got,

because you know it can get better.

Walk into rooms where you’re outnumbered

and say it anyway:

We can take care of each other.

We can build something decent.

We are worth saving.

Be stubborn in joy.

Radical in kindness.

Unyielding in truth.

Start with what you know:

We belong to one another.

Let’s act like it.

Alex Silvestri is a Michigan poet whose work is rooted in place, nature, community, and the ordinary experiences of daily life. This poem was inspired in part by Wendell Berry’s writing on community, neighborliness, stewardship, and our obligations to one another.

QUID NO PRO

by Virginia Aronson

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

The art of his deal
pay for play global
he gets the jet
he lets them get
bombed he shrugs
signs the agreement
changes and cancels
unceasing ceases
after public hoopla
after the rule of law
after the highest courts
more shaky trades, fines
brazen gifts and lawsuits
thrown out, mocked
taxes and wars forever
never true to his word
on anything deals
wives children sex lies
while the world suffers
the land in flames
the seas raging
the children dying
and he grins, shrugs
he's got his quid
and folks, look
there ain't no pro.

Virginia Aronson is the author of many published books. New poetry collections include Collateral Damage (Clare Songbirds Publishing), Whiskey Islandand Whiskey Straight Women (Cyberwit Press).

WORLD CUP BUTTERFLY

by Indran Amirthanayagam 

AI animation by Nightcafé for The New Verse News

Yes, this is a poem dribbled, crossed, headed, corner and free kicked

This is the beginning of the month that will never equal any other

period in time: The World Cup in North America, in Mexico

with families gathering to ask for news of loved ones disappeared, 

to ask for electricity, to ask for justice and to ask for tickets;

In Canada, all quiet for the moment, a tranquil backwater, a pause 

between acts.  But over there in the Great Bearish United States,

denying entry to a Somali referee, claiming an official Iraqi photographer

has ties to terrorists, and eleven US cities handed extra costs by FIFA,  

excluded from sponsorships that compete with FIFA contracts, 

and local taxes  removed from ticket prices. As the saying goes, 

FIFA takes  the loot and host cities are left  holding what? 

A bunch of memories, some extra grass in stadiums, and something 

more ineffable,  beautiful: pride in hosting teams from far away lands 

in our corner of the planet, spinning the web to capture the butterfly, 

not a bad use of taxes to be left holding the woven bag.

Indran Amirthanayagam writes a Substack. He has just published Isla itinerante ( Editorial Apogeo, Peru, 2025) and White Space Sonnets ( Sarasavi publishers, Sri Lanka, 2025). His other publications include El bosque de deleites fratricidas ( RIL Editores), Seer (Hanging Loose Press),The Runner's Almanac (Spuyten Duyvil), Powèt Nan Pò A: Poet of the Port (Mad Hat), and Ten Thousand Steps Against the Tyrant (Broadstone Books). He is the translator of Kenia Cano’s Animal For The Eyes (Dialogos Books) and Origami: Selected Poems of Manuel Ulacia (Dialogos Books). He edits The Beltway Poetry Quarterly, hosts the Poetry Channel on YouTube, and publishes poetry books with Sara Cahill Marron at Beltway Editions.

DEATH TAX

by Mark Hendrickson

In honor of the 250th anniversary of the United States of America, President Donald J. Trump’s signature will appear on future U.S. paper currency along with the Secretary of the Treasury, marking the first time in history for a sitting president. —US Treasury Dept., March 26, 2026

According to a website calculator

what I paid in taxes last year

bought the government 

350 to 500 rounds of ammo.

 

I wonder if I bought the bullets

that killed Pretti and Good

in Minneapolis

by men in masks

 

Or perhaps I helped pay

for the tomahawk missile

that killed over 100 girls

in a school in Iran.

 

I protest policies,

but pay my taxes

the way I was taught

good Americans should.

 

In this way I’m complicit.

Every dollar I send

will be signed by the culprit,

and signed off by me.

Mark Hendrickson (he/him) is a poet and writer in the Des Moines area navigating the Sturm und Drang of daily life through wordcraft. His words appear in The Ekphrastic Review, The New Verse News, and Modern Haiku. Follow him @MarkHPoetry, https://www.chillsubs.com/profile/mhendrickson

 or on his website: www.markhendricksonpoetry.com

ODE TO A MAGA FUTURE

by Peter Witt

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

I don't care if 
Ukraine ends up a satellite of Russia
Israel annexes all Palestinian lands
Poland goes the way of Ukraine
NATO goes defunct

as long as egg prices go down.

I don't care if 
all judges are Trump appointees
gay marriage is outlawed
trans individuals are discriminated against
raped women must still have their babies

as long as bread prices go down

I don't care if
rich people get huge tax breaks
oil and gas wells are drilled on pristine national lands
regulations allow polluting rivers and waterways
steps to reduce climate change are abandoned

as long as the cost of a gallon of gas goes down

I don't care if
things I buy that are made in China become more expensive
illegal immigrants are rounded up and sent home
people to harvest the nation's crops become scarce
workers who build housing and infrastructure disappear

as long as Christian nationalism becomes the law of the land

Peter Witt is a Texas poet, a frequent contributor to The New Verse News and other online poetry web-based publications.

WE WANT A PRESIDENT

a wish list

by Bonnie Proudfoot in collaboration with Betsy Mars

We want a president who moves in down the street, 
spends a week or two. Even if we live in Flint, NOLA,
Hindman, Gallop, Butte, or the Bronx.
 
Who stands at the feet of a chalk line 
around victims of gun violence and weeps 
with families, friends, neighbors of the slain.
 
Who Faces the Nation and Meets the Press, 
This Week and other weeks as well.
 
Who flies Southwest economy class, 
rides the F train, buys local, birdwatches,
who saves the spotted owl, the monarch butterfly
the spotted salamander and the gopher frog. 
 
Who celebrates the 4th of July with poetry.
 
Who protects women who want to bring babies
Into the world and defends women who don't,
stands up for anyone facing gender-based rage,
who nurtures babies and spends time with children, 
not to teach them how to grow up faster 
but to teach herself how to imagine more.
 
Who pays taxes, declares gifts, keeps promises,
learns other languages, uses them. 
 
Who opens the White House doors to heads of
non-profits and legal aid groups, to teachers, 
911 dispatchers, brain surgeons, rocket scientists, 
actors, musicians, dancers, artists, farmworkers, 
bridge builders, smoke jumpers, border guards, 
police, soldiers, not just to donors or glitterati
 
Who recycles the plastic she picks up 
on shorelines and riverbeds. Who puts
solar panels on the roof of the White House and
charges her EV fleet. Who walks or bikes.
 
Who calls out sulfur leaching through creeks, 
fish floating belly up in lakes and rivers, 
the scraped-off mountaintops of Appalachia 
and all abominations to earth in the name of profit
 
Whose compassion breaks us open. 
Whose gravity weighs on us. Whose hope
holds us steady. Who laughs her ample laugh
shakes her womanly hips, hoists her groceries 
in an NPR tote bag, asks too many questions, 
dreams bigger than we ever could.
 
Who sits with Native American elders, 
holds an ear to the earth 
and listens.
 
 
Betsy Mars is a prize-winning poet, a photographer, and assistant editor at Gyroscope Review. whose poems can be found in numerous online journals and print anthologies. She has two books, Alinea, and In the Muddle of the Night, co-written with Alan Walowitz. Betsy is currently and sporadically working on a full-length manuscript titled Rue Obscure.

 
Bonnie Proudfoot writes fiction, poetry, reviews, and essays. Her novel, Goshen Road (OU/ Swallow Press) received WCONA’s Book of the Year and was Longlisted for the 2021 PEN/ Hemingway. Her 2022 poetry chapbook, Household Gods, can be found on Sheila-Na-Gig editions, along with a forthcoming book of short stories, Camp Probable. Bonnie resides in Athens, Ohio.