A RISING TIDE

by Gordon Gilbert

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

At high tide the king comes to the shore

and stands upon the sands at water’s edge 

He commands the sea to leave his kingdom

as followers break into loud applause 

TRiUMPhantly he gloats as it recedes 

But alas he tarries far too long 

The tide has ebbed and soon relentlessly

the waters now make their advance

and still the king refuses to retreat

unheeding warnings from his own soothsayers 

He does not, cannot, won’t acknowledge

the inherent truth that laps now at his feet 

All shall soon be swept away

by the waters of the rising tide

just like the foolish pharaoh and his legions

in pursuit of Moses and his people

who when the waters parted chose to follow 

only to be drowned in the Red Sea 

Gordon Gilbert is a New York City west villager. In these trying times, he finds some solace taking long walks along the Hudson River. He keeps hoping things will turn around, waiting on that elusive inflection point, but it keeps receding. Maybe next time… 

Still waiting.

THE TURNING TIDE

by Mary Janicke

 
a great tsunami washed ashore
            destroying all in its path
books tossed off library shelves
            young people left to drown
in a sea of bigotry
 
then the storm abated
            the tide receded
the public surveyed the damage
            and saw the harm done to the community
                        by the bigots and blowhards
and voted the transgressors off the island
 
civility returned
            respect for one another returned
and most importantly
            books were returned to library shelves
so that knowledge 
            could again be shared

Mary Janicke is a gardener, poet, and writer living in Texas. Her work has appeared in numerous journals.

Editor’s note: The tide turned in Texas, but the wave of book bannings continues elsewhere. Sign EveryLibrary’s petition against book bans here: https://action.everylibrary.org/bannedbooks?utm_campaign=govdislikes_1&utm_medium=email&utm_source=votelibraries

THE GULF OF AMERICA, NÉE MEXICO

by Susan Ayres

The U.S. Department of the Interior announced on Friday that they will implement President Trump’s name change for the Gulf Coast.(wjhg)

 

                        I laugh at what you call dissolution,

                        And I know the amplitude of time.

                                                            —Walt Whitman

 

And yet she too is dissolved in a sea

of fears and worries. Will the rocks smash

her if the saltwater lets her go? In the muted

submersion there’s an isolation. The air

 

bubbles rise in a tickle. Small fish nibble

her toes. It’s not like she’s fallen to pieces.

She’s just lost her reason, her name.

She’s the brain mush and muscle mash

 

of dark swirls in the clear green water,

the murky way men possess women. Her particles

bond to the tickles. The waves push her

forward with the incoming tide. She laughs

 

at what they call dissolution. Floating

face down she knows the amplitude of time.

Susan Ayres is the author of Walk Like the Bird Flies (Finishing Line, 2023) and Red Cardinal, White Snow (Main Street Rag, 2024). Her work has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize, and her poems and translations have appeared in numerous journals. She studied Spanish in Cuernavaca, Mexico, practiced karate for nine years with her son, and now spends time in Texas writing, collaging, teaching, and learning tai chi.

BEAR WITH ME TODAY

by Linda Laderman

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

Bear with me today 

because I’m thinking

about what’s in front

of us in this second, 

whatever, wherever 

you might be—bear 

with me. I’m almost

out of my mind. Feel

my chest, tight, like

elastic ready to snap.

Put down a metaphor

for brittle, body, break.

My body is taut. Rat 

a tat: a series of knocks 

at the door. Slam it shut.

Do you have a warrant?

I don’t do much sleeping.

My body weeps, pulled 

into the undertow. I’ve no

resistance to the rising

tide. Silt, salt, foam, wall.

Bear with me. I beg you,

you who believe, let your

god know this would be a

good time for it to lift up

its countenance among us.

Bear with me if I repeat my

fears—if my refusal to let go 

scares you. I want to know

why you wander door to door,

in pursuit of something you

imagine, but haven’t found. 

Do you hear? The rooms rife 

with past choices, old voices.

I don’t know how this ends. 

Bear with me. I’m searching for a conclusion.

Linda Laderman is a Michigan poet. Her poetry has appeared in numerous literary journals, including Action-Spectacle, SWWIM, Rise Up Review, and Rust & Moth. She is a past recipient of Harbor Review’s Jewish Women’s Prize. Her micro-chapbook What I Didn’t Know I Didn’t Know can be found online at Harbor Review. In past lives, she was a journalist and taught English at Owens Community College and Lourdes University, in Ohio.

OUR COUNTRY... NOT OUR BUSINESS

by Jan Gross

2020 Hindsight by Rob Rogers at The Nib.

Buyers beware! 

We could lose our bid on the sale  

Citizens no more, but customers   

Truth no longer told, but sold

Off to the inside traitors  

   

Bought out by big business  

Walled in by Wall Street  

Gutted by greed  

Dealt out of the deal  

  

His bottom line rules mighty  

Regulations, taxes damned   

Hail to the profit margin!  

Protect the family brand!   

   

Fake the facts!   

Hype the hoax!  

Let hackers and trolls   

Surf coast to coast  

  

Masses trumpet triumph  

Chanting hate inspires  

Winners one and none  

Where QAnon conspires  

  

Monuments stage his glory  

A country’s reality show  

A bible brandished on high  

God’s Truth trampled below  

  

Heroes stripped of honor  

Fawners scale the ranks   

On all sides fine people  

Hateful words just pranks   

  

Covid breathes calamity  

Choked by one man’s vanity  

Old age best begone!  

Make way for the strong!  

  

Refuse to don your face masks  

Cures are easily taken  

His own comeback is clear proof  

Of experts long mistaken  

  

He’s fair as honest Abe was  

Not a racist bone in sight   

With insults heaped on icons   

He helps boost his loser’s plight  

  

Dissenters face dismissal   

Detractors face defeat  

The bar of justice lowers  

Tips the balance for deceit  

  

Clear the way for order!  

Twist the arm of law!  

Protests pave the future  

Marchers won’t withdraw   

  

Black and white, or red and blue  

Dividing lines he always drew  

Will this storm bring rainbows 

With hope to start anew?   

  

Battle lines are hardened  

The bitter end draws near  

  

Time to line up    

Time to fill in  

  

Ballots to mail or not   

Votes to cast once or twice  

  

Votes to buy   

To buy us time  

  

Time to keep us   

Here long enough  

  

To see   

… to see the turning of the tide   

        … for the tide has got to turn.  

Author’s Note: This poem echoes James Baldwin’s plea to settle for what a vote can get you… maybe not a job, or a loan, or a major reform, but “it may keep [us] here long enough … to see, and use, the turning of the tide—for the tide has got to turn.”  (Written prior to the 1980 presidential election in “Notes on the House of Bondage” and quoted in Eddie S. Glaude Jr.’s Begin Again: James Baldwin’s America and Its Urgent Lessons for Our Own.)   

Jan Gross is waiting for the tide to turn. She is Professor emerita at Grinnell College, and is co-authoring a collaborative poetic memoir about interracial friendship, Black & White and In-Between. 

WE CAN STILL DREAM

by Katherine West

American Dream, mixed media in resin artwork by Raphael Mazzucco.

            "I have a dream... we will be able to transform the jangling discords of our nation into a beautiful symphony of brotherhood."  —Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., 1963

Last night I dreamed of rain

It overflowed the culverts 

It washed out the road in waves 

Like a sea in the desert 

It filled the arroyos like a lover 

Or the tide before love the opening 

Before the opening the flower 

Dreaming of the bee dreaming 

Of pollen generations of honey 

The wealth of the hive 

And the queen humming 

Her birth song of infinite flight 

Over a globe of no boundaries 

One garden all colors 

A palette of rainy territories 

Mixing new shades forgetting borders 

Katherine West is the author of three collections of poetry and one novel: Scimitar Dreams, The Bone Train, Riddle, and Lion Tamer, respectively.  She has had poetry published in Bombay Gin, Lalitamba, Tanka Journal, Writing in a Woman’s Voice, and TheNewVerse.News who nominated her poem "And Then the Sky" for a Pushcart Prize in 2019.  She lives in the mountains outside of Silver City, New Mexico where she translates Mexican revolutionary poetry and creates custom, hand-made poetry chapbooks.

LAST DAYS OF FREEDOM

by Mickey J. Corrigan

What about the women who think
they are shore birds in startled flight
over the unruffled sand, eggs nestled
in jagged rock crevices slap-fed
by the bathe and bash sea?

Don't blame the shoreline, comfortable
in the lap and suckle, the eating away
the sloping of high grass dunes
hillcrests ever flattened by time
and growth spurts of starlit cities.

What about the clotted clapboard graves
narrow streets, neighborhoods blissful
in their ignorance, their pancake morning
sameness, their white cream frosting
smothering rich cakes of desire?

Don't blame the strong men barging
onto the ark, boarding forcefully
pillage in their knife eyes, hammy fists
full of weaponry, double strapped bullets
draped across broad hairy chests.

What about the meat-and-potato talk
in the pubs and pastel living rooms
all our fears shrunk to shadows
blued under hot white moons
gibboning in a lurching black?

Don't blame the suck and slur of the tide
days trailing by, forgetting themselves
in the flutterkick to a shared illusion
spoon-fed to us in flying dreams

the windswept sky like a blue door
that will swing shut behind us.


Originally from Boston, Mickey J. Corrigan writes Florida noir with a dark humor. Novels include  Project XX about a school shooting (Salt Publishing, UK, 2017) and What I Did for Love a spoof of Lolita (Bloodhound Books, 2019). Kelsay Books recently published the poetry chapbook the disappearing self.