AUBADES FOR WOMEN LOST

by Andrena Zawinski

“Aubade,” 1942 by Pablo Picasso

So—

(An Aubade for a Woman Lost

So he gave her a pearl handled gun,

its skull and crossbones in a red red rose.

So she packed it moonlighting 

driving nights for a ride share.

So she never used it.

So it was used on her.

So he shoved it sideways inside her

mouth smeared bloody with lipstick.

So her temple bore a jewel of a bullet bloom.

So her dark eyes rolled backwards ghastly white.

So she kept on talking: no, oh no, oh no.

So he was a person of interest let go.

So they strung a cardboard toe tag

where she had worn his gold band.

So they put her in the cold bed 

silenced in a morgue drawer.

So at daybreak on her birthday, he ate 

that same gun, metallic on the tongue, 

crying out: no, oh no, oh no.

So it never even made the evening news.

—for Georgeann Eskievich Rettberg 

    (1952-2003)

She—

(Another Aubade for a Woman Lost)

She, mother of three

in the routine of another day,

shot down driving away 

in the Minnesota snow 

from ICE officers

mixed and missed dictates.

She, another woman lost, 

her wife and observers

in a chorus of fear

calling out

oh no, oh no, oh no.

She, a poet who wrote

of solipsist sunsets,

tercets from cicadas,

that the bible and qur’an 

and bhagavad gita…

make room for wonder.

She, now a metaphor

of lilies and lavender,

votives and tea lights

peace signs and queer flags

for what could have been,

what could be for any of us.

She, in a murderous

last rite anointed as fucking bitch

silenced by three bullets,

face awash in blood.

She, reduced

to an endless loop 

of twisted narratives

on the news circuits

while women cry out

again and again an endless

oh no, oh no, oh no.

—for Renee Nicole Good 

    (1989-2026)

Andrena Zawinski is the author of four full-length collections of poetry, most recently Born Under the Influence. Her work has been lauded for its appreciation of nature, spirituality, social concern, and craft. Her writing appears widely online and in print, including at Verse Daily. Born and raised in Pittsburgh, PA, she has made her home on Alameda Island in the San Francisco Bay Area. 

LESSONS OVER 80 YEARS

by Royal Rhodes

Physicians for Social Reponsibility

     "...then uncontrollably I began to weep..."
           —Derek Walcott, Another Life


The original child bomb
at an early hour
in the Far East
burst in the August air.

It made the atmosphere
truly luminous
like god-particles
in transfiguration of light.

Pedestrians on a bridge
were silhouettes
racing to paradise
as Buddha's smile froze.

And now after decades
the terror birthed
there, a monster
birth, is wombed again.

Treaties are twisted into
origami devil dragons
and peace bells again
are blessed but silenced

new technology multiplies
death for millions while
protesters are sent to jail,
making death much safer.

We have disremembered
the faces moistened
with molten jellies
from upturned, burst eyes.

Royal Rhodes is a poet whose poems have appeared in numerous literary journals, including several times in The New Verse News.

SWAMP THING

by Mark Hendrickson

Kermit the Frog grew up in a swamp  
before he moved to Manhattan  
where all the rats still skate on butter. 
He tried to warn us that rainbows are only illusions,  
back before his voice changed,  
back when swamps seemed quirky and cute. 
 
Speaking of swamps, a story came out today  
about the 2010 discovery by Felisa Wolfe-Simon  
of a low form of life that lives in the muck  
and somehow thrives on toxic arsenic; 
she has now discovered other seemingly mindless creatures  
that appear to thrive on sheer magnetism alone. 
 
I live in the blue center dot  
of a tidal pool made of salt and Windex  
surrounded by organisms that live  
on all that is poisonous, microbes that live  
by breaking down all structure,  
that thrive on decomposition.  
 
People cheer as every potentate since Saint Reagan  
swears to finally drain the swamp; yet instead  
we see it is the swamp that drains us. 
We are mangroves surrounding ourselves with mangroves,  
all standing up to our knees in it, 
mired in marsh and methane. 
 
We all know swamps smell like corrupted flesh,  
yet our nostrils are so saturated we can’t tell anymore. 
Complacency is a swamp we think is stagnant 
even as it spreads to engulf us, and Canada, and Greenland. 
We have become swamp things: reluctant heroes twisted by the world, 
trying to save what we can; a show too implausible to endure for long. 

Mark Hendrickson (he/him/his) is a gay poet and writer in the Des Moines area. His work has appeared or is forthcoming in Variant Lit, Vestal Review, The New Verse News, Spellbinder, and others. Mark worked for many years as a Mental Health Technician in a locked psychiatric unit. He has advanced degrees in marriage & family therapy, health information management, and music. Follow him @MarkHPoetry.

MY STEPSON IN TEL AVIV SENDS A SHORT VIDEO

by Catherine Gonick

At night, on a street near his house

neighbors follow as soldiers carry

a spent missile as if it were a body.

The weapon that landed, killing

only itself, is about the size

of a man, maybe six feet long,

one end twisted by impact.

It takes three men to carry the gray

corpse to wherever they are going.

I don’t know how it is in Hebrew

or Arabic, but in English, when we say 

a body, we know without being told

whether the body is dead or alive.

Catherine Gonick has published poetry in journals including Live Encounters, Notre Dame Review, Forge, Blue Heron Review,and Beltway Poetry Quarterly, and in anthologies including Support Ukraine, Grabbed, and Rumors, Secrets & Lies: Poems About Pregnancy, Abortion and Choice. She works in a company that slows the rate of global warming through projects that repair and restore the climate.