EVERY LITTLE BIT: A HAIBUN

by Miriam Weinstein

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

My assignment—oranges and limes—As much or as little as you’re able to bring—the emailed instructions specified. Food and supplies collected for people afraid to leave their homes during the ICE invasion of Minnesota. Operation Metro Surge. Thousands of uniformed, masked agents carrying weapons—now a common sight on the streets of my city. Agents of fear acting erratically. Lying in face of facts. Spreading terror and chaos across my State—land of ten thousand lakes, surging rivers, roaring waterfalls. In the church parking lot, volunteers load carts—boxes of diapers, canned goods, packaged products and produce. A middle-aged man wheels a cart to the side of my car. I pull out two large reusable bags, empty contents. Five, six pound bags of oranges, five, three pound bags of limes. Small offering considering—68, 400 people, rounded and roughed up, interrogated, arrested. In the name of searching for illegal, criminal aliens, citizens and legal residents—seized—two Americans murdered by ICE agents. Their real agenda—to breed uncertainly, fear, and chaos. Every little bit counts my friend tells me. I’m desperate today to believe in something. Has the produce I dropped off  reached its destinations? During this unfathomable crisis, is someone, somewhere being nourished?

Dusk display—turkey vulture 

soars, swoops down. Curved beak 

grasps carcass, carries rat skyward.

Miriam Weinstein completed a two year apprenticeship program at the Loft Literary Center in 2013. She has two chapbooks published by Finishing Line Press: Twenty Ways of Looking and How to Thread a Needle. Her poems are in several anthologies and journals including A 21st Century Plague, Rocked by the Waters, Poems of Hope and Reassurance, The Heart of All That Is, Survivor Lit, The New Verse News, Plum Tree Tavern, Vita Brevis Press, St. Paul Almanac, and American Jewish World. Her manuscript Here. Between. Beyond. was a finalist for the Concrete Wolf Press Louis Award. Miriam Weinstein is an avid birdwatcher and environmentalist. She lives in Minneapolis, MN.

THE THINGS GOOD PEOPLE DO

by Cecil Morris

Portland’s ‘frog taxi’ offers a life-saving lift to a struggling species. Volunteers shuttle Northern red-legged frogs across U.S. Highway 30 to prevent real-life Frogger. —OPB News, November 23, 2024

A little morning news that made me smile:
In Oregon, the Harborton frog shuttle,
a handful of concerned amateurs,
a collection of volunteers, patrol,
through November chill, at night in the rain,
to gather spawning Northern red-legged frogs
and transport them, free of charge, across blur
of traffic on U. S. Highway 30,
thus preventing a slaughter of innocents.

Let me be like those people, tender-hearted
and kind and brave and willing to protect
the ones who, alone, cannot save themselves.
Let me join the flotilla of volunteers
who come out in dark of difficult times
to ferry those in need back to safety.

Cecil Morris, a retired high school English teacher and Pushcart and Best of the Net nominee, has poems appearing in The Ekphrastic Review, Hole in the Head Review, The New Verse News, Rust + Moth, and elsewhere. He and his partner, mother of their children, divide their year between the cool coast of Oregon and the relatively hot Central Valley of California.

THE CHILENO VALLEY NEWT BRIGADE

by Martin Elster

For the past four years, volunteers have spent their winter nights shepherding newts across a one-mile stretch of Chileno Valley Road, a winding country road in the hills of Petaluma. They call themselves the Chileno Valley Newt Brigade, and their founder, Sally Gale, says they will keep showing up until the newts no longer need them. —The New York Times, January 24, 2023

Chileno Valley Road cuts smack across

their migratory path, nestled between

forests and farms and ranches, yet the loss

of newts (small, slender creatures rarely seen

at night) can be acute. It’s time to breed.

Downpours have deluged rivers, ponds, and lakes.

Amphibians wake. They feel an urgent need.

Drivers don’t heed them, nor apply their brakes.  

Dozens of orange forms (wheels can’t dissuade them,

for genes in their amphibian marrow bade them)

slither to the blacktop, blind to dangers.

Yet here’s the noble Newt Brigade to aid them

to reach the primal waters which have made them,

now clinging to the fingers of kind strangers.

The winner of the 2022 Helen Schaible International Sonnet Contest, Martin Elster comes from Hartford, CT, where he studied percussion and composition at the Hartt School of Music and performed with the Hartford Symphony Orchestra. Martin, whose poetry has been strongly influenced by his musical sensibilities, has written two books, the latest of which is Celestial Euphony (Plum White Press, 2019).

THE PROMISE OF HANDIWORK

by Jen Schneider




A single tear drops and pools on uneven hardwood planks.
Startled white mice scamper. Droppings where gravel
and cement once filled buckling wood crevices cushion
wool socked soles. A burgundy chest, adorned with two
brown leather straps and a single metal lock, rests
in the far-right corner. Blanketed in warm layers of dust
and tattered cloth, the family heirloom boasts of guarded memories.

Blurred photos, sweat-stained frocks, penned letters—
Normal times and ordinary folk

To its right, a cardboard box, coated in a film of powder
and particles unknown, houses a machine long silenced
yet now pulsing with hope. Its thick black electrical cord,
wrapped in a tight coil, springs loose as lungs near
and far struggle to contract, then release.

Ready. Set. Go. Breathe.

Soon settled at the square kitchen table, pots
of needles, spools of speckled thread—shocks
of light lavender, crimson red, pistachio green -
and piles of fabric—gingham, plaid, tartan—
emerge with potential born anew.

Unordinary times. Normal folk seek purpose.

Coffee brews, then turns cold. Time presses
on as dry, chafed hands, fingers arched
from years of fieldwork, pull threads, needles,
and long discarded garments from bedroom
chests and kitchen drawers. Bodies work
with an urgency—a race against no ordinary clock—
long stifled and now eager to breathe.

Hours later, the machine continues to whirl
as needles pulse and earlier anxious feet pump
in a calming pattern—One, Two, Three, Breathe.
One, Two, Three, Breathe—generating new life
in old shifts to aid the beat of chests worn down
by a silent beast that silences the beat of a nation.

Moments of silence turn lengthy. Prayers for a world on pause.

Scattered thoughts focus on spools of twisted and spun
threads that bind with supple cloth. Patterned sketches
of protective gear for front line heroes convert
to tangible realities.

Ordinary days in extraordinary times.

In unity we find strength. And hope blooms anew.

Jen Schneider is an educator, attorney, and writer. She lives, writes, and works in small spaces throughout Philadelphia. Recent work appears in The Popular Culture Studies Journal, Bat City Review, Zingara Poetry Review, Streetlight Magazine, Chaleur Magazine, LSE Review of Books, and other literary and scholarly journals.

A COIN OR A COMB

by Laura M Kaminski

"We can't continue to play the ostrich game anymore, especially 

for those of us who still insist on being called POETS..."

— Chiedu Ezeanah

Who will pay me for a poem, read
one and be moved to action? Who
will open their ears and remove
the deafening silence? Who will
pay a coin of attention, enough
for a pack of combs, a book of
poems, and add to a small stipend
for a volunteer to go and read
to orphans while they learn to
pick and braid each other's hair?

Do you not remember when you
yourself were small, the feel
of your mother's hands upon
your head? Do you not recall
your impatience on occasions
when you were eager to be on
your way, finished with this
process? But when you left,
did you not carry the sense
of her affection with you,
the confidence that she would
not have loosed you until
you were your most presentable?

Who will pay me for a poem,
send a coin or a comb? And
who will take time to visit
orphaned children, offer them
the reassurance of adult
affection, let them know they
are not forgotten, that an
entire nation is present
to serve as surrogates for
parents they have lost? But
there is so much silence.

Are we afraid to face their
destitution and their grief?
Do we believe there are too
many for us to make a real
difference, and afraid of
failure, fail to even try?
Is there no path from silence
into action? What use is a poet
who will not be a beacon? If
there is no path, then let
the poets set the course
with words and wear it with
their feet, don't let the words
be empty. Let the poets lead.


Laura M Kaminski grew up in northern Nigeria, went to school in New Orleans, and currently lives in rural Missouri. She is an Associate Editor at Right Hand Pointing, and the author of several poetry chapbooks and collections, most recently Dance Here (Origami Books, an imprint of Parrésia Publishers Ltd, Lagos, Nigeria).  

PILING ON

by Charles Frederickson & Saknarin Chinayote

Proud heritage pitiful anti-natural disaster

Architectonic rumbling

Daily bread no longer given

Magical dragons entrapped snowbound lairs

Looking down from isolated heights

Precarious existence smothered by ash

Votive lamps churned buttery meltdown

Trackless Sherpa trails left behind

Empty void filled with tenacity

No vacancy guest houses demolished

Children used to nothing strangely

Making do with even less

Thankless volunteers sifting contaminated rubble

Bloodhounds sniffing vital heartbeat signs

Humanitarian relief anonymous god sent

Colorful life savers myriad flavors


No Holds Bard Dr. Charles Frederickson and Mr. Saknarin Chinayote proudly present YouTube mini-movies @ YouTube – CharlesThai1