RE-FRUITING

by Regina YC Garcia 

Nolan Wells' tragic death joins a long list of Black youth whose untimely demises have raised urgent questions about justice and accountability. —MadameNoire, July 10, 2026

This tree smells oddly familiar

as worms peer up

from disturbed ground

This water sighs in sadness

as sealife swims unabated

and dark-bodies sink

This land heaves up old hurts

as mouths protest 

“All is well!”

(the lies they tell)

Regina YC Garcia is an award winning poet, language artist, and professor from Greenville, NC. Her published work appears in NCLR, Fiyah Black Speculative Lit, Soflopojo, Amistad, Elevation Review, Charlotte Lit, and others. Her first chapbook The Firetalker's Daughter published by Finishing Line Press was released in March 2023, and her full-length book Whispers from the Multiverse published by Aquarius Press/ Willow Books was released in February 2025.

A HOLY TIME OUT

by Robin Stevens Payes

The perfect Christmas for those of us who do not celebrate

has always been a matinee followed by egg rolls and

 

stale fortune cookies cracking open to commemorate 

this year of the wood snake; instead we take up a new tradition

 

setting out on a sunny holy day for cragels and lox

with everything and a heated debate about prediction markets 

substituting for insurance (count me not a fan)

followed by a hike with son and daughter-in-law

 

Me scaling a tree for the first time in maybe five decades—my son guiding 

each foothold, bark scratching palms, dogs barking beneath bare limbs

 

Son practicing shaky handstands on the hilltop’s brown and pebbled dirt—

we three for a time feeling as free as our tail-wagging dogs running along the lake 

 

No one needing insurance this once—predictive or otherwise—

thank God or Spirit the Sun the Son or Mary or whoever you pray to

 

to stay healthy young-at-heart and carefree—we claimed it as

a joyous moment to celebrate family and love on this beautiful Earth

 

A sacred break beneath the promising glint of a star—our own 

taking a Holy Time Out from the existential dread of being alive in 2025

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.

HAIKU FOR TORY MEDLEY

by James Penha

Tory’s death declared

suicide but his hanging

reprises strange fruit

James Penha edits The New Verse News. His latest book is Queer as Folk Tales.

GREEN

by John Minczeski

On the news feed this morning,

on my phone’s small screen, two

children shot dead at morning Mass

before school. Others wounded

before the shooter turned the gun

on himself. Pardon me, readers,

this is not a poem, 

I must follow Adorno’s 

dictum. And yet, how refuse 

the poem, however prosaic

and filled with reportage. How,

gentle reader, can I look at the tree

in my front window, the one 

thinking of turning yellow,

that just yesterday made me think

life and beauty fill the same page.

This is not a poem, it is an outrage.

Twenty minutes from here,

maybe twenty five from my toast

and eggs sunny side up, the dead

and wounded children. Like ones

I taught in my career, whose eyes 

brightened with poems. 

A few clouds punctuate the sky. 

My younger brother has arrived

in Wyoming to drive my reclusive

older brother to California.

This is not a poem, it is a window

to my older brother so taken

with the beauty of the Tetons

he tried killing himself. At the end

of King Kong, a guy says it was

beauty that killed the beast. 

Therefore two brothers are in a car

driving west to a new normal,

and children with head wounds

are being treated at Hennepin General.

This is not a poem, this is a treatise

on teaching theodicy to six year olds.

This is me looking out the window

watching wind flip the leaves.

The green, the verde, que te quiero

verde of Lorca. Green leaves,

green children, que te quiero.

 

John Minczeski is the author of five collections as well as several chapbooks. His poems have appeared  previously in NVN as well as The New Yorker, The Harvard Review, and elsewhere. Minczeski worked as a poet in the schools for many years, and has taught at various colleges and universities around the Twin Cities. He served as president of the board for The Loft Literary Center when it was on the second floor of a bookshop in the Dinkytown area of Minneapolis.

DOES IT UPSET YOU?

by Mariam Saidan

After Audre Lorde’s “A Woman Speaks”

 

I have been woman

for a long time

youth was fragile

scary at times

most of the times

nonadjustable to 

the shape I was becoming.

Misunderstood I was.

Out of mind, troubled

when I didn’t quite like 

the safety of home, 

control or harassment. 

I died many deaths  

each time returning

with a new survivor in me.

Fear no longer suited me. 

I’ve grown into a 

thousand-year-old tree.

They cut a branch,

take a leaf,

it grows back.

It always grows back.

Try and take the sun out

of day. 

There are birds living in me,

one always sings,

and a fox curled up on the shed

just a stone’s throw away in 

my garden, looks at me.

Under my living room where 

I keep vases in different shapes 

and colours, painted and 

filled with wildflowers, 

there’s a cellar

and below that,

an ocean,

pounding.

With every tide 

I become water.

Offending waves.

Dramatic drops.

Vast freedom.

Bewildering imagination.

There’s no end to this thirst.

I’m not scared of pain,

it makes things interesting.

My eyes sometimes

look into yours,

but no, not asking to be

touched.

I’m here

to live this life

like no one but

the woman I have

become. 

I’m not ashamed to

drown in this sea.

Mariam Saidan is a Specialist Advocate for Women’s Rights and has worked as a Children’s Rights Advocate, studied Human Rights Law at Nottingham University (LLM) and Creative Writing at Kent University. She is Iranian, based in London, and has lived in Iran, France, and the UK. She wrote her first journal at 8 years old while living through the Iran-Iraq war.

WHAT I TELL MYSELF

by Marjorie Tesser

 

That it’s all right to mourn. Okay to take a day to grieve. Okay to take it slow,

to do some yoga, take a nap; you know last night you didn’t sleep, the writing

on the wall a tale of loss on loss writ with excruciating slowness, unrelenting speed.

 

I warn myself not to indulge in doom prescience, worrying each bead

of a litany of despoliations sure to come. Try not to guess how they’ll pervert 

the name of freedom, desecrate “liberty,” have their nasty fun.

  

...women’s health and status racism xenophobia homophobia transphobia environmental waste bizarre quasi-scientific theories conspiracy book banning religious hegemony distasteful alliances impetuousness anti-intellectualism clannishness cronyism greed shitty “jokes” glorification of the mean spirited the sociopathic the stupid....

 

(I remind myself I was not going to do that. Tell myself it’s okay 

to backslide, as long as I catch it). Caution myself: anger can spark, 

but combust and turn to ashes.

 

Remind myself I can’t be so surprised; numbers show 

what I already knew in my heart: we’re still a misogynistic, 

racist nation in significant part. Remember that they feed 

 

on negative attention; deny them that sustenance. 

Command myself not to freeze in terror or wallow in despair; 

not to always blunt feelings with self-soothing behavior.

 

I tell myself my job’s the same: to be present, kind, true to my values

and respectful of others’, to support those that champion such aims 

and care for those who need. To uphold ideals, to interpret with empathy. 

 

To try to put it into words. To remind myself of bright points, precious few 

though they may be. I tell myself to write a poem take a walk talk with friends 

spend moments with an animal or tree.

 

The only way is forward.

 

Eyes and mouth, heart and hands and feet.

Marjorie Tesser’s poetry and fiction have appeared in Molecule, Cutleaf, poets.org, SWWIM, and others. She is the author of two poetry chapbooks, The Important Thing Is, winner of the Firewheel Chapbook Award (Firewheel Editions 2010), and The Magic Feather (FLP 2011). She has co-edited three anthologies of poetry and prose, and is editor in chief of MER - Mom Egg Review.

CAN YOU LET THE CICADA BE BEAUTIFUL?

by Morrow Dowdle

When one, newly broken from its honeyed shell

tests flight’s imperative,

   whirs, strikes your skin,

will you turn to see who’s there?  Don’t look up.

Don’t think you deserve only what’s lofted.

This holy spirit lies on asphalt on its back.

 

Reconsider where it comes from, this fear

of what that can’t harm us. 

        Why do we hate it?

Turn it over if you are brave enough to touch it. 

Braver still if you will lift it.  Make your fingers

delicate as chopsticks on a robin’s egg.

Don’t pitch it in the grass.  Let it cling

to your wrist,

           its legs’ gentle sharpness.  You are just

another kind of tree, flesh-barked.  It crawls

your arm, and that’s when you see its eyes of red,

such a red we could never manifest—

not the richest lips, not the sex in its engorged

glory.  And its wings,

           its wings when they unstick,

intricate as any dragonfly, yet you’ll never find them

enshrined in silver, glass, or amethyst.

Are you brave enough, now, to allow it

to approach your head?  You have no xylem, no sap

for it to taste.  Nothing

                                     to dread.  But would you kiss it?

Could you name it the most modest of angels,

if much disgraced?  An angel must have wings,

but surely, it can wear any face.

 

Morrow Dowdle has poetry published in or forthcoming from New York Quarterly, Pedestal Magazine, Fatal Flaw, and Poetry South, among others. They have been nominated for the Pushcart and Best of the Net.  They edit poetry for Sunspot Literary Journal and host “Weave & Spin,” a performance series featuring marginalized voices. A former physician assistant, they now work as a creative writing instructor for current and former prison inmates. They live in Hillsborough, NC.

ODE TO THE HONEY LOCUST

by Therese Gleason

With a line from “All Hallows” by Louise Glück (1943-2023)

I want to write a poem about autumn 
that doesn’t decay 
and stink on impact.
I want to write a poem about the beauty
of small children (whose shoelaces flap
and sneakers slap 
asphalt) that doesn’t reek 
of sweetness. 
All I can offer is a dispatch
from a mid-October recess in central Mass., 
the sky scrubbed squeaky
by an overnight rainstorm,
where kindergarteners skip and whoop
as the wind picks up, pointing to heaven
as the tall honey locust drops
its shower of gold: spiraling eddies 
that drift slowly, softly onto cracked concrete.
The bulky apartment complex next door peeps 
between ragged bushes and chain link
as I holler at a child to come down the hill, away 
from the edge of the dark wood
where scattered syringes linger 
in the barrenness of harvest or pestilence:
our playground tree a site of life
and death, both honey and locust, feast 
and famine. We found a dead mouse 
beneath its fraying canopy
last week. I stood astride the carcass 
swatting curious fingers seeking to probe
its torn side buzzing with flies, its tiny 
bared teeth—and in an instant 
I remember the sickening bump 
under my back left tire, a raccoon
on a dark road, how I honked and swerved,
too late… I can’t forget its wobbly tromp, 
its eyes blinded by my headlights 
before I rendered it dead meat—
I feel a tug like grief, like a small hand
at my sweater’s hem, and look down
into cupped palms brimming 
with tattered gold leaves.

Therese Gleason is author of three chapbooks: Hemicrania (forthcoming, Chestnut Review, 2024); Matrilineal (Honorable Mention, 2022 Jean Pedrick Chapbook Prize, New England Poetry Club); and Libation (co-winner, 2006 South Carolina Poetry Initiative Competition, selected by Kwame Dawes). Her poems appear in 32 Poems, Indiana Review, New Ohio Review, Notre Dame Review, Rattle, and elsewhere. Originally from Louisville, KY, she is an adjunct creative writing instructor at Clark University and an ESL teacher in the Worcester Public Schools.

THE NEWS AT SYCAMORE GAP

by Gus Peterson

Boy, 16, Arrested After Felling of Famous U.K. Tree That Appeared in 'Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves.’ The tree, known as the Sycamore Gap tree, appeared in the 1991 movie 'Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves' starring Kevin Costner and Morgan Freeman. —People, September 29, 2023

Minutes after it breaks,

the breaking down of it,

speculation online—

only a trained arborist

could have done this,

the cut so surgical,

the wound so practiced.

Only one versed in

disassembling the world,

only inhuman hands

would hold the hungry teeth

of a saw so steady,

impart such cleanliness

to death, here where the empire

at last reached its limit,

Roman wave thinning

over the beach of the world

the way a dough’s fabric,

rolled again and again,

tears. In the end,

vandalism. In the end,

just another kid. In the end,

any surgery a cutting open,

off, the inside revealed

out, that all too human face

leaning in for a look,

admiring its handiwork.

Gus Peterson lives and works in Maine. 

TREESILIENCE

by Deb Freedman

While the Lahaina banyan tree has yet to rebound back to its pre-fire splendor, signs of life are very much there, according to landscape contractor Chris Imonti. “We did root samples last week and we had very good news as far as new life in the roots. A lot of new roots shooting off. We tested the moisture and arborist Steve Nims, who is the unofficial leader of the Banyan Tree hui has analyzed all the treatments and he is out today putting sensors on the tree to measure growth rates. With the compost tea we are seeing good results and as long as we give it enough love, I think it’s going to be fine,” Imonti commented. Additional measures have been put into place by the hui (group) who are caring for Lahaina banyan tree and working towards its restoration. The ground and soil around the tree is being regularly aerated, and it is often being treated with a “tree-loving soup,” a mix of nutrients Imonti himself formulated for the recovering banyan. Additionally, volunteers are spreading chopped up alfalfa, a legume—a soil enhancing green manure—around the base of the tree to aid in its recovery. —Hawaii Magazine, September 6, 2023

In Tallahassee,

Hurricane Idalia hurled

a 100-year-old oak tree.

The tree’s fall

fractured

Governor DeSantis’ mansion

in his absence.

Notified of its collapse,

the governor was optimistic.

He told reporters,

if the entire tree needs to be cut,

“…that’s just going to be more room

for my kids to hit baseballs in.”

In Lahaina, Maui,

a 150-year-old banyan tree,

the heart of the town,

devoured by

fast-spreading wildfires

spurred by human error

stands

scorched

living tissue at its core.

Kanaka

in grief,

some homeless,

some looking for lost loves,

nourish the banyan tree

with water

and organic compost

in a town burnt

but not of love nor hope.

Steve Nims, arborist tree tender,

says it is “kind of in a coma…

There are good signs the tree will recover…

It’s up to the tree.”

Deb Freedman is a poet living in Pennsylvania. Her poems have been published in The New Verse News and DVP/US 1’s Worksheets 67. She hopes the oak and banyan trees survive and thrive.

LIFE EXPECTANCY

by Martha Deed

Gravestone inscription: Erected in memory of Mrs. Kezia Cutter, wife of Mr. Richard Cutter, departed this life Dec. ye 1788, in ye 63rd Year of her age. "Watch ye, that live, for ye don't know / How near you are to death. / Or what may give the fatal blow / To stop your fleeting breath."

Life expectancy in the U.S. fell in 2021, for the second year in a row. It was the first time life expectancy dropped two years in a row in 100 years. —NPR, August 30, 2022

You could die of a sudden attack in church
be run over by a buffalo in Montana
be felled by a tree if you wielded an ax unwisely
or TB, smallpox or Typhoid
in a bomber over Northern France
starve
drown at sea
die in childbirth
fall off a horse or a runaway train in the Rockies
be kicked by a Union officer’s horse between battles
be killed at Deerfield or in Narrangansett Swamp
by a rogue at a card game in Deadwood

Death was just around the corner in those olden days
Everyone knew that life was a delicate thread
stitching oblivion before birth to oblivion after death
survival provisional and linked to mere chance

The old-timers knew
You can’t turn your back on death
Death can find you any place any time

But now—now we 21^st Century descendants
in a time of shrinking life expectancy
think we control our destiny
having survived hiding under desks
to fool the atom bomb

Now we do not await the trickiness of Fate
Now we have to look for the nearest exit
the place to run, hide or fight
at the grocery store or church or school
because we have turned nasty
or have not silenced others who have turned nasty—
the nastiest among us declaring supremacy
and the right to kill at will
die quickly on the street
or slowly by telling all the scientists
to go to hell

Martha Deed's poetry has appeared in The New Verse News and most recently or forthcoming in Moss Trill, Mason Street, Autumn Sky Poetry Daily, Grand Little Things, The Skinny Poetry Journal. Her poetry collections Under the Rock (2019) and Climate Change (2014) and a third collection forthcoming from FootHills Publishing. She is a retired psychologist who makes trouble with poetry inspired by crises and other mishaps around her house on the Erie Canal in Western New York.

CHRISTMAS CARD

by George Salamon

We have not yet been touched by

the better angels of our nature,

I hear the music of our time

singing songs of ill will, waging

campaigns of hate, shouting

murderous chants, but few

angels singing.

Let us wake them up and let

them sing of peace and good

will and join them by sharing

fruitcake and gingerbread

by the same tree in the

spirit that  has been fleeing

from our land.

George Salamon hopes those better angels will touch America on both sides of the many-sided divide that has settled upon our lives.