LEFT

by Margaret Rozga

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

What is left?  

The word could mean

an abandonment,

or a departure from,

as left a warm bed

as when your love departs for a new love

 

But, no.

I refuse to leave us in this land of negativity.

because that’s not all that’s left.

There’s left as a direction

as in turn left at the corner…

 

There’s left as remainder, what is still there

as in a winter coat left

on the back of a dining room chair,

or as in leftovers,

as in sometimes chicken soup that’s leftover

tastes better the 2nd day         

 

That brings us to where we want to go—

the positive

 

Left as positive—

We have ideas left.     

We have time left.

We have energy left.

We have truth and respect for truth left.

We have values left.

We have a left left.     

We are that left and

we are left growing here, growing stronger.

Margaret Rozga, University of Wisconsin Milwaukee at Waukesha Professor of English Emerita, served as the 2019-2020 Wisconsin Poet Laureate and the 2021 inaugural artist/scholar in residence at the UW Milwaukee at Waukesha Field Station. She has published six books, most recently Restoring Prairie (2024) and Holding My Selves Together: New & Selected Poems (2021).

POEM FOR THE INAUGURATION

by Amy Elizabeth Robinson

So much blood

on his lie-drenched tongue.

Too much

to explore

in a poem. This poem

chooses

to turn in a new direction. 

It hears 

the heavy gates

of justice 

closing 

on his reign of infancy 

and terror.

It applauds 

the sharp-shinned 

hawks 

of empathy

who guard the precarious 

scales. This poem

will not forget, yet

it turns

towards 

the dawn. 

You know this dawn, this

tender filigree of

sun-soaked web. 

The spiders have been spinning

all through the night.

Their webs of diligence,

and promise, and 

shimmer of delight. This poem 

insists on making

a plea deal

with the moment. Guilty

of exhaustion, 

it ends its 

fractured sentences

with care. 

Amy Elizabeth Robinson is a poet, writer, historian, mother, and many other things. She did live in the eastern mountains of Sonoma County, California, but her collectively-owned community recently burned in the Glass Fire. She is a community leader at Flower Mountain Zen, and her work has appeared in Literary Hub, Literary Mama, West Marin Review, West Trestle Review, Vine Leaves, Rattle’s Poets Respond program, and elsewhere. She blogs at www.turningplanet.org.

WAITING FOR THE ELECTION RETURNS

by P J Krass

Even the trees are holding their breath
The date by which their leaves should have turned
pumpkin banana blood 
has long passed
Now a kind of dull grey paint
flecked with brown persists
as though the leaves were camouflaged for battle
and something essential they needed from the soil
had gone missing

The cold night serves notice of autumn’s reign
Knowing what’s expected, the trees hold back
Some maybe half dream of rolling back summer
The others look ahead
to blue ice white snow black sleet
they try          though it isn’t easy 
to imagine 
the tender green of spring

Poems by PJ Krass have appeared in journals including Rattle, American Journal of Poetry, Atlanta Review, Stickman Review, Connecticut River Review, Chaleur, Caesura and The New Verse News. He teaches at The Writers Studio, an independent writing school founded by Pulitzer Prize-winning poet Philip Schultz. PJ is also the poetry co-editor of an anthology, The Writers Studio at 30.