RAPPROCHMENT

by Lynne Barnes

 

for my old friends and family across the political divide

 

I hope you don’t take this the wrong way,

my inkling sense that you might have been hoodwinked.

I mean this as a bridge, an off-ramp from finger pointing.

This is not a diss or dismissal. It’s a hug across the aisle.

I once lost myself in a group mind in the past,

ignoring flaws and facts, and wondering later 

how could I have let that happen? But,

I found it hard to listen to anyone telling me that

back then.

So I can understand if you can’t hear the love 

in my rapprochement plea, or if you take it 

as an annoying missive filled with superiority.

 

But what if we could talk to each other 

beyond our silos, agree perhaps 

on a Cronkite-like-mediator-angel force

we might all turn to— to mine for truth?

 

As old friends and kin, we care about each other sweetly

beneath the macrospheric pressures weighing on us all.

Let us tap our deeper spirit of belonging together

in higher plane of woven hope, let us try to tame 

that primal pull that aims toward dismissive othering.

We are precious human Americans, hopeful, powerful, 

a force for good in the world. We are a nation of

hard knocks, hellish genocides, crippling inequities

spanning centuries, but we are also brilliant in our

caring-heart warrior spirit bivouacking faithfully

toward that more perfect union inside an imperfect world.

 

Narcissism is a destabilizing force every time it rises.

We must find a way to tame it firmly, kindly,

if we want humanity to survive.

 

Please, let us reach out, hold each other tight

in these fast-moving, precarious days.

Are we on a rocket ship to the moon, 

or are we going down for the third time?

Or are we somewhere in-between?

 

Let us come together in an arena of cool, calm love

and try to figure this out, beyond the bluster,

the name-calling, the violence. 

Let us go deeply into our best selves, 

reach out from our other-hoods 

with civil compassion,

invite and honor

empathic conversation.

We are loving family and dear old friends.

We can do this.

 

Lynne Barnes is a retired psychiatric nurse and librarian who has lived in San Francisco since 1969. Her poetry memoir Falling into Flowers (Blue Light Press, 2017) was a finalist for the 2018 Eric Hoffer Book Award.

EQUITY AND TOLERANCE

FOR STONEWALL

by Roberta Batorsky

 

 

Three days after the Trump administration removed a Rainbow Flag from the Stonewall National Monument, defiant activists hoisted the Rainbow Flag once again in front of a jam-packed crowd of fed-up LGBTQ community members who flooded the area surrounding Christopher Park.  Photo by Donna Aceto. —Gay City News, February 12, 2026

Bury the flag of empathy,
it no longer belongs here.
Turn its rainbow black—
disavow the pride it gave
commemorating AIDS victims,
lives lost as in a war.
and it was a war, unended, unwon.
 
Pull the emblem of suffering
of men, women and children,
renew the prejudice that killed
Oscar*, Alan** and others,
deliver it with its own symbol
of derision and weakness.
 
It wasn’t Ellen D***. that convinced us,
Matt Shepard’s death didn’t convince us:
something fundamentally changed then.
Now bathroom jokes, lewdness, shame,
insinuation, guilt and closeting
all shift to the front burner.
 
Bury the flag of concern for people
deep in the heart of the heart of this country.
 
See us now, re-emerging, colors blazing,
in freedom’s garb,
to shake off erasure,
proclaiming our unity:
Our city, our flag.
 
 
*Oscar Wilde
** Alan Turing
*** Ellen Degeneres

 

 

Roberta Batorsky, a New Jersey poet, has published this month her first book of poetry, Perihelion.

PUBLICITY STUNT

By Matt Witt

Danny Danon, Israeli Ambassador to the United Nations, on X.

When 500 leaders from 40 countries formed a flotilla to try to deliver humanitarian aid to Gaza, the Israeli government arrested them and said the flotilla was a “publicity stunt” and against the law.

When auto workers sat down in a General Motors plant in 1937 and refused to relinquish the factory until the company recognized their union, that was a publicity stunt and against the law.

When young Black people challenged segregation by sitting at whites-only lunch counters, that was a publicity stunt and against the law.

When suffragettes chained themselves to the White House and went on hunger strikes in jail to win the right to vote, that was a publicity stunt and against the law.

When protesters in India led by Gandhi boycotted British goods as part of a campaign for independence, that was a publicity stunt and against the law.

When South Africans deliberately violated apartheid rules like curfews in Black townships, that was a publicity stunt and against the law.

So many laws. So much power. So many publicity stunts yet to come.

October 4, 2025

Matt Witt is a writer and photographer in Oregon. His work may be seen at MattWittPhotography.com. His latest book is Monumental Beauty: Wonders Worth Protecting in the Cascade-Siskiyou National Monument.

INCENDIARY SONG

by Matthew King

Art by Clay Jones

Baby you’re the Reichstag
I’m setting you on fire
You no longer represent me
I’m immediate desire
Our constitution is suspended
on a fence of barbed wire
Baby you’re the Reichstag
I’m setting you on fire

I’ve cancelled your election
I’ve exposed your fatal flaw
Trapped in your reflection
we argued to a draw
The people want perfection
they love to be in awe
Baby you’re the Reichstag
my will is the law

Our union needs annulment
our wedding was a sham
The preacher stole the word of God
now he’s on the lam
He said he’d bless the devil
he didn’t give a damn
Baby you’re the Reichstag
who do you think I am

Like lightning this befell me
not you but I self-crowned
No court can now compel me
my power is unbound
I dare you try to tell me
my methods are unsound
Baby you’re the Reichstag
I’ll burn you to the ground

I’m rounding up your lovers
each one of them a liar
They tell me they don’t know you
say it’s me they most admire
Now I alone can save them
or throw them on the pyre
Baby you’re the Reichstag
I’m setting you on fire


Author's note: Many, not on only one side of the political divide, have been watching for a "Reichstag Fire moment." The thing about historical echoes is you're never sure what you're hearing is exactly what it sounds like, but with some things sounding like them at all is bad enough. A hat tip to Leonard Cohen, whose shade I seem to be channelling in this poem, and who would have turned 91 on Sept. 21. Leonard! thou shouldst be living at this hour; lucky for you you're not, I guess.


Matthew King used to teach philosophy at York University in Toronto; he now lives in what Al Purdy called "the country north of Belleville," where he tries to grow things, counts birds, takes pictures of flowers with bugs on them, and walks a rope bridge between the neighboring mountaintops of philosophy and poetry. His photos and links to his poems can be found at birdsandbeesandblooms.com.

THE MORNING AFTER

by Donna Katzin

The New Yorker cover by Malika Favre

 

We celebrate Hartz Mountain worker-women

in the pet food factory in Hackensack,

treated worse than the dogs they fed,

their every move, bathroom break

surveilled by bosses when they

dared to organize a union.

 

We give thanks for Irene Eaglin,

who came north on rails of Jim Crow,

scrubbed white women’s floors with calloused hands,

wore a pink uniform that marked her as a servant,

taught the pale child in her charge

about the Klan and apartheid.

 

We remember the children of Soweto,

commemorated by museum garden stones,

who marched by the hundreds in blizzards of bullets,

armed with chants and posters claiming

the right to learn in their own tongue

and to grow up.

 

In solidarity, we honor Victor Jara,

in the Santiago stadium, where he sang

against the dictator to horror-stricken fans

who looked on as torturers mangled his body,

and he played liberation songs on his guitar

with broken hands.

 

We bow our heads today

for 18 year-old Neveah Crain,

hours after her Texas baby shower,

when sepsis set in, lingered, and doctors

refusing to remove the “unviable fetus”

from her womb, let them both die.

 

We write epic poems to Kamala, a woman of color

who ran to run our fragile, fractured nation

 where men afraid to let a woman lead

chose instead to listen to propaganda

to hide the timorous family member

trembling between their own legs.

 

We welcome them all to stand with us now

in a parched land we scarcely recognize,

scarred by the lust for profit and power,

oil and blood, that has left us searching

for our voices and each other,

thirsting for the rain.

 

Donna Katzin is a published poet and contributor to The New Verse News. She served for 26 years as executive director of Shared Interest, which does community development and investment work in South Africa, having previously worked for the Interfaith Center on Corporate Responsibility as director of South Africa and International Justice Programs, after organizing for the UAW. She is a member of the Reforming Judaism's Tikkun Olam Commission, working on reparations in the U.S., and co-chairs Tipitapa Partners, empowering grassroots women in Nicaragua. Her book of poems and photographs With These Hands chronicles post-apartheid South Africa's process of giving birth to itself.

ANOTHER LION MEETS WINTER

by Jennifer M Phillips

Time to step back from your long labors, Joe,
and let the eager young ones try their hands.
You've kept the long watch safe all night, we know,
and spared the ship of state from bergs and sands.
Heed the prophet's words, predicting, at his finish,
"another will increase, and I must diminish."
 
Your whole career you've served the working jack,
walked the union picket-line, yanked foreign jobs home,
foreseen future industries, retooled the work,
and understood such tasks are never done.
How it pains the industrious will to step away
before well-laid plans arrive at light of day.
 
It goes against your conscientious grain
to leave unfinished what's urgently needed
for this time of tempestuous fire and intemperate rain,
but the ground is prepared and a good harvest seeded.
Trust our resilient future, its competent folk,
to find new pathways for new repairing work.
 
You've fought for justice, remedy, and franchise
on an uphill slope and seen strong weapons shattered,
and though, as always, demons and enemies rise,
you've braced to hold the line when it has mattered.
Now there is a rank of fresh supply behind.
Fall back with honor. Trust the guiding Mind.
 
Democracy feels a fragile edifice
that monks must sweep away when prayers are done
like a painting in sand that time and wind erase.
One God-breathed moment: hearts are not the same.
See: the fresh art commences, the template resurrects;
renewed hope finds voice, as the Spirit directs.
 
O world-sorrow always with us, wars that never end,
but flurry like grackle flocks from one tree to another;
Many losses borne; retirement's one more to mend.
Your back is strong, your loves close by, your  team calls you brother.
you've led us by your best lights, and now will lead in this.
Believe that a gallant soul is never purposeless.

Jennifer M Phillips is a bi-national immigrant, painter, Bonsai-grower, with two chapbooks: Sitting Safe In the Theatre of Electricity (Blurb, 2020) and A Song of Ascents (Orchard Street Press, 2022). Phillips' work has appeared in over 100 journals, and is currently twice-nominated for a Pushcart Poetry Prize.

BEING ROOMMATES WITH A STRIPPER

by Jennifer Elise Wang

The picket line on Lankershim Boulevard in North Hollywood has been loud, energetic, flamboyant, and... costumed. The strippers from Star Gardens have organized for their protection and become a cause célèbre for other organizers and unions across the country. —People’s World, June 6, 2022

When your roommate is a stripper,

You discover who makes

The teeniest thong

You can legally get away with

And that 7-inch Pleasers

Are not too bad to walk in.

When your roommate is a stripper,

You start going to the gym more,

Not to have her body exactly

But to have the same gluteal control

In order to twerk along with her

In your at-home dance parties.

When your roommate is a stripper,

You see the stacks of 1s,

But not the 5s, 10s, or 20s

She has given to the house and staff.

When your roommate is a stripper,

You stop laughing at jokes about her job

Because her colleague was stalked

And another was threatened

While the bartender laughed

At the image of her possible demise.

Every night, it’s a flip of the coin

As to whether she’ll be assaulted.

When your roommate is a stripper,

You learn about misogynoir,

TERFs and SWERFs,

Labor rights and union-busting tactics,

And that it’s always “sex worker”

And never “prostitute” or the other word

That sounds more apropos for fishing.

When your roommate is a stripper,

You get advice on how to set boundaries

While still smiling at the customer.

When your roommate is a stripper

And getting ready for a night of picketing

While you’ve come home after overtime

And drink a beer with some Tylenol

For your Carpal tunnel and plantar fasciitis

And blink away your dry eyes,

You realize you are selling your body too. 

Jennifer Elise Wang (she/they) is a lab tech, burlesque dancer, drag king, and poet. She won First Prize for Open Poetry in the 2018 On My Own Time Art and Literary competition and has been published in The Gunpowder Review, Jerseyworks, and R2 Rice Review. In her free time, she likes to skateboard and volunteer at the animal shelter.

AMAZON

by Donna Katzin

On Friday [April 1, Christian Smalls] won the first successful unionization effort at any Amazon warehouse in the United States, one of the most significant labor victories in a generation. The company’s response to his tiny initial protest may haunt it for years to come. —The New York Times, April 2, 2022. Photo: Members of the new union celebrated in Brooklyn on Friday night. Credit: Eduardo Munoz Avarez/Associated Press

At the fulfillment center in Staten Island,      

every day a marathon, she logs 30 miles

in 12 hours on the warehouse floor,

wearing worn-out shoes she cannot afford to replace,

picking, packing boxes on dollies and hand trucks

before she clocks out.

Jeff Bezos, back from outer space,

could not finish one of her shifts.

 

Beneath fluorescent lights that never sleep,

during precious seconds between packages,

when her mind fights to focus,

she thinks of little ones

she left before breakfast,

not knowing whether she would

make it home to feed them dinner

or kiss them goodnight.

 

Computers track how fast she picks and packs

on the human conveyor belt,                               

evaluate her by algorithm,

feed back seconds per task,

pieces per minute, numbers to hit,           

speed up without notice or reason,

threaten to dismiss her                    

for missing her target rates.

 

Knees buckle, back rebels,                       

wrists and elbows numb, cramp.          

Stress takes its inner toll,   

presses veins and arteries,                                        

hangs heavy on her heart.

She reports to Amcare,                                  

is given an aspirin,                                           

sent back to the floor.                                       

 

But quietly, between shifts, 

as summer sweats and winter gnaws her weary bones,

she joins coworkers, shares indignities and injuries

by telephone and text, Twitter and Instagram,

in parking lots, food pantries and pews,

dares to tiptoe to a meeting,

whispers the word

union.

 

Donna Katzin is the founding and previous executive director of Shared Interest, a fund that mobilizes the human and financial resources of low-income communities of color in South and Southern Africa.  A board member of Community Change in the U.S., and co-coordinator of Tipitapa Partners working in Nicaragua, she has written extensively about South Africa, community development and impact investing.  Published in journals and sites including The New Verse News and The Mom Egg, she is the author of With the Hands, a book of poems and photographs about post-apartheid South Africa’s process of giving birth to itself.

ON ANOTHER AVERAGE EVENING

by Ethan McGuire

Top: Art by Molly Crabapple, special to ProPublica, April 24, 2020. Bottom: Graphic from National Nurses United.

She lies sprawled across a battered couch,

green scrubs still covering her body,

a cheap wine glass dangling from outstretched fingers.

He swings through the splintering apartment door,

blue, button-up uniform unbuttoned,

stained undershirt beneath it. “I’m home.”

“I had an awful day at work,” she sighs

as she picks up a bottle of Woodbridge merlot.

Pouring a glass, her eyes search the hall for him.

“Yeah?” he grunts, opening the fridge.

“Been having trouble with the charge nurse again,

and my plantar fasciitis is back.”

“Oh, no,” he says, pausing in the hallway.

“Administration, man, they’re coming down on us!

‘Course they won’t lower censuses for a damn thing... 

Maybe just another freaking pizza party... 

They’ll call us heroes but won’t give us a chance.”

“That sucks,” he says, as he limps through the hall

and as he sinks into the couch beside her.

“I hate being a floor nurse, hate it like hell.

I’ve gotta do something else.”

“I’m sorry.”

 

They sit still

in the cold and the quite then.

They only stare absently into

a noiseless, motionless TV, until

their hands touch. A certain love connects them.

She scoots over closer to his body,

and he slides his soiled, calloused hands under hers.

Ethan McGuire works by day as a healthcare information technology professional and by night as a writer, whose poetry, fiction, and essays have appeared in Better than Starbucks, The Dark Sire, Emerald Coast Review, and The Poetry Pea, among others. Ethan McGuire grew up in the Missouri Ozarks, but he, his wife who also works in healthcare as a nurse, and their new daughter currently live in the Florida Panhandle near the Gulf of Mexico. Twitter: @AHeavyMetalPen

CATS & DOGS

by Scott C. Kaestner

My dog is a Socialist
and my cat a Capitalist.

My dog speaks of the pack 
my cat wants to be left alone.

My dog sleeps on the floor
my cat naps in a penthouse.

My dog wastes not an ounce of kibble
my cat scoffs at its gourmet food.

They are two different beings no doubt
and there is definitely conflict.

Like during the 2020 Democratic Primary 
my dog a Bernie Bro and my cat Ridin’ with Biden.

Or the time my dog’s Communist Manifesto
caught fire when my cat knocked over a candle.

Said it was an accident like when my dog
mistook the cat’s Wall Street Journal for a bone.

I have my suspicions as they both
like to poke and stoke each other’s fire.

Just when I think conflict is inevitable 
and a peaceful existence a pipe dream.

Come home and find the two of them
snuggled together on the couch.

Then I am reminded that differences 
make their union stronger.

Scott C. Kaestner is a Los Angeles poet, writer, dad, husband, and street taco enthusiast. Google ‘scott kaestner poetry’ to peruse his musings and doings.

A PESSIMIST TAKES STOCK

by George Salamon

Darkness & Light Art Print by Zeke Tucker

"Pessimism is a conscious filter which disarms ideologues and frees us to act in a practical manner.” —John Ralston Saul, The Doubter's Companion

The air all around our leader echoes with shouts,

His Tweets can not put the tiles that fell off the

Roof of his political temple back up, the storm of

Coronavirus has come and its furious waves grow

Denser, it bursts through masks and measurements

As it rages and more than 142,000 lives have gone down.

Our leader is concerned only with the quadrennial

Cockfight staged for us as Democracy while too many

Among us have lost touch with first things,as bands of

Rebels, marginalized and mocked, try to restore it,

In their own fashion, forcing us to see the state of our

Union from the short view, pitch in, waiting for the

Long view to stumble and stagger close enough to

Lead us to the light out of the darkness we chose.

George Salamon took to pessimism when he was a refugee kid in Switzerland during World War Two and the Holocaust, but he has not let it sour into cynicism. He lives and writes in St. Louis, MO, and most recently has contributed to The Asses of Parnassus, One Sentence Poems and TheNewVerse.News.

SESTINA IN BROWN

by T R Poulson

UPS workers react at the scene where a gunman shot and killed multiple people including himself at a UPS facility in San Francisco, California on June 14, 2017. Several people were shot on Wednesday at a San Francisco warehouse and customer service facility operated by global parcel delivery service UPS, authorities and the company said. UPS spokeswoman Natalie Godwin told AFP the incident involved four workers at the sprawling facility, which employs 850 people. Photo credit: JOSH EDELSON/AFP/Getty Images

The Warriors were on fire
we said: those crisp plays and passes
around the curved black line, the ball and net’s
dance, again and again, those hands
lifted like a lover’s wave. The players
taunted and shoved and said they were joking.

Game four was a joke.
Overseas, nobody laughed as the fire
climbed higher, higher, disrupting play
in bedrooms and out. Things curved and passed
and fell through smoke and flames. Hands
dropped a blanket-wrapped baby through the net

of smoke, as below there were no nets
to catch him (this was not a joke).
The baby fell, and different hands,
sure as Steph Curry’s, took him from fire
to something unknown, a no-look pass,
from love to a chance to make plays

on dark courts like the one where we played
off Arlington Street, Friday nights, the net
of work behind us as the moon made its pass
above us, until dawn loomed, and our jokes
grew strange.  Here, my memory’s fire
smolders.  Years pass, and still underhanded

bosses rule us, who judge and hand
out warning letters, or play
with our numbers, even try to fire
us, though our union’s safety net
saves us.  It was only a joke,
the bantering words that slanted and passed

among us, about a coworker who could pass
for a molester in a movie.  We pictured his hands
with a gun.  It was only a joke.
My buddy used to pretend, to play
the creepy coworker, his friendship a net:
“When he brings in a Glock, he won’t open fire

on me, and I’ll hand him a list.”  Names passed
between us:  the spitfire loader, the sorter with the net
stockings at home, the player of wives.  A joke.  A joke!

T R Poulson is a UPS driver out of the Menlo Park, California, center.  She attends community classes at Stanford, and her work has appeared previously in TheNewVerse.News, as well as in Verdad, Main Channel Voices, Alehouse, Trajectory, Wildcat Review, The Meadow, The Raintown Review, J Journal, and Verdad.

REFLECTING ON MOBY DICK A FEW DAYS BEFORE THE ELECTION

by Wilda Morris

Image source: aNewDomain

We still have not learned
all the lessons that Melville taught:
the Union is not as united
as we once thought,
how easy it can be to drop prejudices
when we get to know
and love the pagan stranger,
the risks of empire building,
and how bowing to a self-absorbed
and vindictive leader puts us all in danger.

If Melville were writing today
the crew would grow from thirty
to fifty, as many as the states
that could sink into the abyss
if we leave this election to the fates.
We may be on the brink.


Wilda Morris has a doctorate in political science from American University in Washington, D.C., but instead of becoming a political scientist, she ended up as a poet. Her blog provides a monthly contest for other poets.

UNION RAT

by Joan Colby

KOHLER, WIS. — Talks have been resumed between the Kohler Co. and the union that's been on strike for nearly three weeks in Wisconsin. Tim Tayloe, president of Local 833 of the United Auto Workers, said in a text message Friday that the union and the company met this week, and will meet again next week. A Kohler representative confirmed to the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel that negotiations have resumed. Local 833 represents about 2,000 workers at Kohler's kitchen and bath-ware plant in the Village of Kohler and at a generator factory north of Sheboygan. The union went on strike Nov. 15. The union wants to do away with a two-tiered pay scale that it says unfairly limits new employees to roughly $13 an hour. Kohler has said its contract offer was fair. —The News & Observer, Dec. 5, 2015

The inflated rat sits outside the fence
Where strikers protest unfair wages
Or conditions no human would endure.
The rat has a pink snout, sharp fangs
And a large round eye, orange as a
Setting sun, lacking a pupil, soulless.
Its jaw is ajar, its claws
Like those of the wicked bosses
Who rip up contracts that say
Workmen deserve to make a living.

I wave, thumbs up, as I drive by.
My grandpa was a Wobbly,
Back in the copper mines, back in the day
When men were hung for protests
Like this one. I’d like to have a rat
To blow up every time I feel abused
By a misguided friend who thinks a fascist
Is what we need to restore law and order.
How satisfying it would be to park
That big ugly rodent in her driveway.
Better than just unfriending her on Facebook.


Joan Colby has published widely in journals such as Poetry, Atlanta Review, South Dakota Review, The Spoon River Poetry Review, New York Quarterly, the new renaissance, Grand Street, Epoch, and Prairie Schooner. Awards include two Illinois Arts Council Literary Awards, Rhino Poetry Award, the new renaissance Award for Poetry, and an Illinois Arts Council Fellowship in Literature. She was a finalist in the GSU Poetry Contest (2007), Nimrod International Pablo Neruda Prize (2009, 2012), and received honorable mentions in the North American Review's James Hearst Poetry Contest (2008, 2010). She is the editor of Illinois Racing News, and lives on a small horse farm in Northern Illinois. She has published 11 books including The Lonely Hearts Killers and How the Sky Begins to Fall (Spoon River Press), The Atrocity Book (Lynx House Press) and Dead Horses and Selected Poems from FutureCycle Press. Selected Poems received the 2013 FutureCycle Prize.  Properties of Matter was published in spring of 2014 by Aldrich Press (Kelsay Books). Two chapbooks are forthcoming in 2014: Bittersweet (Main Street Rag Press) and Ah Clio (Kattywompus Press). Colby is also an associate editor of Kentucky Review and FutureCycle Press.