A TRUE EPIDEMIC

by Diane Elayne Dees

 

"In the City of Shreveport, we have a true epidemic of domestic violence….”
—Shreveport City Council Member Grayson Boucher

 

When I was a little girl, my parents took me
on a rare outing downtown; my mother’s
face and neck were free of bruises,
so we could roam freely among other families.
As we crossed a busy Shreveport street,
a man shoved a woman against a car
and began hitting her with his fists.
No one intervened. Finally, a policeman arrived,
and pulled the man off the woman. “Listen,”
he advised: “Take her home and do that.”

At that moment, I thought I understood
everything about my mother’s bruises.
It would be years before I understood
that—even if a  policeman had taken
my father to jail—he would not have stayed
there. And even if he had, there was nowhere
for my mother to go. And even if there were,
the slow-dripping acid of trauma had already
eaten away her soul, and left burn marks
where there had once been beauty and creativity.

The killer in Shreveport had “dark thoughts,”
and now, eight children are dead. His wife
thought that she had escaped, but now she lies
in a hospital, with critical wounds. How do you
end an epidemic that courses through decades,
neighborhoods, churches, and income brackets,
and whose victims—if they live—become carriers
of trauma, fear, rage, and assorted deadly germs
that damage brains and flatten the souls of the unborn?

Diane Elayne Dees is the author of the chapbooks, Coronary Truth (Kelsay Books), The Last Time I Saw You (Finishing Line Press), The Wild Parrots of Marigny (Querencia Press), and I Can't Recall Exactly When I Died (Kelsay Books). Diane, who lives in Covington, Louisiana, also publishes Women Who Serve, a blog that delivers news and commentary on women’s professional tennis throughout the world. Her author blog is Diane Elayne Dees: Poet and Writer-at-Large.

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.

THE INEQUITY OF JUSTICE

A Sestina

by Lucille Gang Shulklapper

Dreams die in the blood of children,                                          

embryos born from the seeds of sorrow,

the milk of starvation, the torture

of chains and broken bones, the searching

of scorched earth; of survival as the “other.”

Mother and child, deported, disappear.

A cancer-ridden toddler and his mother disappear.
The video follows the mother, struggling to free her child
from the chains that bind them to “others,”
to the brutal and inhumane soldiers, deaf to sorrow,
prodding them toward a military plane, after searching
naked bodies with naked hatred as prodding guns torture
 
the nameless, bent and broken, then pack them in tortured
positions, until the engines roar, the plane lifts, and America disappears.
Activists march in the streets, carrying signs of protest, searching,
their eyes and ears alert to the danger of their neighbors. Children
and strangers in their midst, yet unaware of pain and sorrow, 
might be kidnapped, handcuffed, and thrown into cars with “others.”  
 
As if on cue, masked men swoop down upon “others,”
targets of skin and color, a mother and three daughters, tortured 
by HSI in their own home, left with smashed lives of fear and sorrow,
shivering in their underwear, in the rain, until the men with guns disappear,
leaving terror, and trauma cut with razor blades, on the backs of children
 looking for meaning in sleep, and awaken to desperate searching. 
 
Is there no end to a life whose desperate searching
leaves scars and barriers to block all “others,”
grieving as ICE hunts men, women, and children.?
The loss of deported loved ones enduring torture
affects human beings who mourn their disappearance,
and pursue justice in community and legal searches.?
 
Today, a Vermont man was not deported. Released from sorrow,
returning to his community which made, rehearsed, and researched 
plans to release him, they acted to assure his reappearance.
Hope returns with him, to all of us in helping “others”
escape the lawlessness of criminals in their acts of torturing
“Illegal aliens”, the name given to adults and innocent children.
 
            How much longer can children endure grief, sorrow, and torture?
Who will name these children? Why are they the “others”?  Has justice disappeared?

Lucille Gang Shulklapper is the published author of five chapbooks of poetry,  short stories, and picture books. Her work appears in journals, magazines, and online. She has taught reading from K-college, made recordings for the blind, and led workshops for The Florida Center for the Book, and others. Though she wrote from the age of six, she was never published until  the age of 60. Three decades later, she has started an Open Mic Poetry Program for her residential, and assisted living fellow retirees.   She lives in Boca Raton, Florida. 

WOMEN’S HISTORY 2025: SAY HER NAME

by Robin Stevens Payes

my country is busy writing out history
1.     women
2.     immigrants
3.     ukraine
so I must write them in
 
grandma sophie checks
these boxes 
one
two
three
she left the shtetl in 1893
for the american dream
 
she fled
1.     pogroms 
2.     despots
3.     poverty 
 
she arrived by
1.     horse and wagon 
2.     train
3.     ship 
 
violently assaulted
violated
a #metoo moment
before we could speak
such things aloud
my grandmother kept
her life lost a life 
silenced
 
in pursuit of 
1.     love
2.     safety
3.     family
 
silenced by shame she
never spoke her trauma
but passed it down
on top of the genes
 
episilencing generations
1.     ancestors
2.     descendants
3.     ascendance
 
through no fault of her own
and now her landsman
this democratically elected
leader of a free country
 
symbolized by the sunflower
source of seeds and oil
hearth and home like sophie
symbols of peace and resilience
 
comes to defend freedom
and dignity for all
not to grovel
at the tsar’s feet
 
violently assaulted
violated
an #ustoo moment
we must speak aloud
 
I call out the horror 
sophie’s story is america’s story 
truth trauma triumph and all 
 
i am writing herstory  
1.     SOPHIE her name
2.     PROUD her legacy
3.     AMERICA her goldene medina
 
episilenced #nomore 

Sophie

Robin Stevens Payes is a time traveler who reasons that time and space are just inconvenient rules that other people decided the world must follow. After decades of trying to fit some notion of “normal” she chose to dive deeper into the offbeat, allowing verse to fill a poetic void. Her poetry has appeared in several anthologies: Dawn Horizons, East Sea Bards, Maryland Bards Poetry Reviews, and Reflections. She is time traveling to retrieve fragments of her grandmother Sophie’s story in [re]member the world, weaving together poetry, memoir, history and science. She writes about the process of weaving memory into a tapestry on her Substack https://remembertheworld.substack.com/

THINGS EASIER THAN MARRIAGE TO IKE

by Elaine Sorrentino

Sprinting across the I-30
in the dead of night 

the leggy legend 
with infectious charm 

 

turned trauma into triumph, 

swapped bloodied and beaten
for surviving and thriving
in an act of self-preservation. 

She dared to be the needle 
that pricked the heady
Love Team balloon,
indestructible Tina  

in leather and denim
scrubbed toilets
scaled the Eiffel Tower in heels
unearthed her pain 

instead of maintaining
her 16-year limelight lie,
transforming thirty-six cents
and inconceivable drive 

into the Queen of Rock,
self-love, that second-hand emotion
had everything to do with it, 
Buddha offered nirvana.  

When the shine was off the penny
she was at peace slowing down,
asking her devoted public 
not to disturb her before noon. 

Elaine Sorrentino has been published in Minerva Rising, Willawaw Journal, Glass: A Journal of Poetry, Ekphrastic Review, Writing in a Women’s Voice, Global Poemic, ONE ART: a journal of poetry, Agape Review, Haiku Universe, Sparks of Calliope, Muddy River Poetry Review, Your Daily Poem,  Panoplyzine, Etched Onyx Magazine, and at  wildamorris.blogspot.com. She was featured on a poetry podcast at Onyx Publications. 

DIASPORA SPEAKS

by Indran Amirthanayagam

A Palestinian girl in the rubble of her home in Gaza.Credit: Fatima Shbair/Getty Images via The New York Times, June 2, 2021

Who controls the narrative, the media space, the buzz?

Who dominates headlines, chats with editors, balances

the story? Who reduces trauma to numbers, who has not

experienced pulverizing stones, his parents' home razed

at close hand? You and I who read together in safe

countries, saved by fleeing parents in search of peaceful

neighborhoods to raise their children. Now, we face a cousin

across the water crying I want to be a doctor, a nurse,

to save my family, now this. What am I to do with this?

With this stone, this shrapnel, this broken washbasin?

What am I to do, to play hide and seek with ghosts?

Do something, people. Stop the killing now. Stop

the killing here, everywhere. Stop the killing.

The poem has a purpose, these words are not useless.

Indran Amirthanayagam writes in English, Spanish, French, Portuguese, and Haitian Creole. He has 19 poetry books, including The Migrant States (Hanging Loose Press, 2020) and Sur l'île nostalgique (L'Harmattan, 2020). Indran Amirthanayagam's Blue Window/ Ventana Azul, translated by Jennifer Rathbun,  is about to be published by Lavender Ink/Diálogos Books. In music, he recorded Rankont Dout. He edits The Beltway Poetry Quarterly, is a columnist for Haiti en Marche, won the Paterson Prize, and is a 2020 Foundation for the Contemporary Arts fellow.

CIRCUS

by Nicole Caruso Garcia

Simpler times by Pat Bagley, The Salt Lake Tribune, UT 

For Dr. Christine Blasey Ford, who testified before the Senate Judiciary Committee, 27 September 2018


“We can't allow more time for new smears to damage Judge Kavanaugh, his family, his reputation, the reputation of the court, and of course, the reputation of the country…. it's time to end the circus.” —Senator Orrin Hatch (R) Utah


That’s what they heckle when a woman dares
To place her head inside the lion’s chops.           
(Drumroll…there are so few volunteers.)
You gird yourself and leap through flaming hoops

Of memory. As did Anita Hill,
You helmet-up and light the cannon’s fuse.
You swan dive, pray there’s water in the pail,
Become a Tattooed Lady inked in news.       

The men who pound the tent-stakes shake the high wire.
One-piece swimsuit, terrified, you list
Details: two guys, locked door, tunes loud, cries dire,
His hand upon your mouth. You don’t resist

But willingly subject yourself to groping
Questions. This appointment is for life.
Fifteen, you palmed no key but luck, escaping
His drunken weight as water filled the safe.

You’re poised, hang by your hair and strength of jaw.
The big cats roar. One sniffs he’ll never quit.
Your risk respects the gravity of law,
And cold hard truth is not so soft a net.

The crowd goes home. The clowns and beasts will slumber.
You still can hear two crude young men, their laughter.

Nicole Caruso Garcia is Assistant Poetry Editor of Able Muse and a Board member of Poetry by the Sea: A Global Conference. Her poetry has appeared or is forthcoming in RHINO, Measure, PANK, Mezzo Cammin, Crab Orchard Review, Light, Modern Haiku, The Orchards, The Raintown Review, Antiphon, and elsewhere. She resides in Connecticut.

BUCKLE

by Sarah E. Colona

More cake than cobbler. Some call it slump. Some betty.
But it’s forever August in my Memory’s kitchen:
where peaches, butter, and brown sugar puddle.

Sweetness something he too expected
in his clumsy reach for what was never offered.
Some call three decades too late. Too faded.

As if trauma grows stale for survivors.
If not your vote, he would have your silence.
Every recipe yields in the end.

Sarah E. Colona lives and teaches in her home state of New Jersey. She is the author of three poetry collections: Hibernaculum (Gold Wake Press, 2013), Thimbles (dancing girl press, 2012) and That Sister (dancing girl press, 2016).

KINDNESS

by Mary K O'Melveny

José, 5, carries with him a drawing of his father, whom he has not seen since they were separated upon arriving in the United States from Honduras. —“The Daily,” The New York Times, June 20, 2018. "And the president’s order does nothing to address the plight of the more than 2,300 children who have already been separated from their parents under the president’s 'zero tolerance' policy. Federal officials said those children will not be immediately reunited with their families while the adults remain in federal custody during their immigration proceedings. "—The New York Times, June 20, 2018

Some of us are always trying to be kind.
Even in smallest ways.  Even as the known
world self-destructs around us, shards of
optimism falling from the sky before we even
have a chance to look up to see what has
shifted us off our comfortable axis.

I’ve got a chipmunk problem in my yard.
The tiny furred creatures have popped up
everywhere, sending showers of dirt
into the air like it was Yellowstone.
I cannot kill them even though I want to.
They will not leave even though I have raged

at them, insulted them and their ancestors.
My neighbor brings a have a heart trap
so I can remove them kindly.  He baits it with
peanut butter.  Soon the trap has a frightened
occupant.  I cannot bear to look out for fear
of crying.  The prisoner is soon relocated.

The trap is replaced.  A new chipmunk takes
the bait.  He too is repatriated to a new territory.
Capture and repeat.   The metal trap looms larger
each day as an unending array of innocents are
tempted by creamy nut paste.  Soon enough,
I begin to worry about babes left behind in tunnels,

about mothers and fathers  grieving for lost children.
One day a chipmunk plants itself on my deck
and looks in through the window.  My kind self
huddles behind the blind.  I will not make eye contact.
This is the humane way, I say to myself, even as I begin
to imagine each trapped rodent wearing an orange

jumpsuit as interrogators gather nearby with pen
and paper waiting for the inevitable confessions.
One night, the trap is sprung, its detainee freed from
house arrest.  I am thrilled.  Then I learn that a bear
has likely done it.  Probably thanked me for the easy meal.
Now I am lost in my worst fears.  There is no kindness in my yard.

How could I have thought otherwise?  This is how
it always begins.  Good intentions vanishing
like some dying star,  rationalizations
reverberating across celestial centuries.
Turns out it is our unwavering belief
in our self-righteousness that is the trap.


Mary K O'Melveny is a recently retired labor rights attorney who lives in Washington DC and Woodstock NY.  Her work has appeared in various print and on-line journals.  Her first poetry chapbook A Woman of a Certain Age will be published by Finishing Line Press in September, 2018.

CONSTRUCTING A NEW LANGUAGE

by Megan Merchant

“Perhaps Trump is the ultimate gift to feminists: a grabber and bragger who has focused the world’s attention on the outrages women quietly endure on a chronic basis without notice. And perhaps we can now see the mid-90s response to Bill Clinton’s own accusers — subdued or defensive among liberals on account of his women-friendly politics — as a near miss of an opportunity, a cultural shift that could have built on the momentum of Anita Hill, but never did. The stories emerging about Trump, as well as his own words, could give women a new way of seeing their own experiences with sexual assault going forward — as part of a pattern of male behavior that has been noted, flagged and loudly denigrated.” —Susan, Dominus, The New York Times, October 13, 2016

There is a story that begins with a father
giving his son a bag of nails and instructions

to pound one into the fence with each flare of anger
and at first, there were more than three dozen,

then two, then a single day without a slip.
The son was proud, said “Dad, look.”

He nodded, continued “Now, for each day
you stay calm, pull a nail. What do you see ?”

A fence with scars.

And some in our country will say that’s
where the light gets through, or you won’t notice

if we build the fence bigger,
or the holes are there—get over it,

but the CDC has recorded that one in every five
women in our country is raped,

and that’s only what’s reported, their kits neatly
packaged, sit on a shelf, twenty deep to a bin.

The room stuffed with scars and swabs.
The nail hammered in, torn out.

And what if I told you that almost half
were before age eighteen. But numbers blur.

You think there can’t be that many, say hysteria,
drama, revenge, lying bitch.

So I ask, where does anger go ? If not packaged
in bullets and bombs, it stews in the mouth,

tingles down to hands. Drugs, rubs, robs.
Leaves holes.

Have you ever noticed the way women
walk in the dark ? Arms crossed over breasts,

clutching her body, because it is a thing that
can be taken.

If you are willing to listen,
you will learn the language of trauma.

A gospel of mirrors
and a man with a mouth full of nails

claiming words don’t matter. But they do.

Stories come into being to save lives.
To warn others from danger.

Anyone who has survived will tell you,

the human responsibility is to do more
than just listen.

Megan Merchant is mostly forthcoming. She is the author of two full-length poetry collections: Gravel Ghosts (Glass Lyre Press) The Dark’s Humming (Winner of the 2015 Lyrebird Prize, Glass Lyre Press, forthcoming 2017); four chapbooks and a forthcoming children’s book with Philomel Books. She lives in the tall pines of Prescott, Arizona.