HOW TO MAKE AN ISD*

by W. Barrett Munn

*Improvised Sandwich Device

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

Prosecutors Fail to Secure Indictment Against Man Who Threw Sandwich at Federal Agent. It was a sharp rebuke to the prosecutors who are dealing with the fallout from President Trump’s move to send National Guard troops and federal agents into Washington. —The New York Times, August 27, 2025

It's obvious I've been radicalized.
In nursing school, I was taught
critical thinking. But then, 
I attended a radical-left 
communist community college
in tiny rural Tonkawa, Oklahoma.
It hasn't helped
that I"ve had to listen to this fool spout
his nonsense day after day after day.
Like Father Karras in The Exorcist, 
I've been driven to take some kind of action 
against all these devils.
I'm at Subway. The idea pops.
I begin to make a plan. The casing
of the bomb will be critical, hard but
not too hard, and not too heavy to hold
in one hand. That means it will have to be
toasted and still have some heft.
Nothing light with a lot of holes in the crust.
Sourdough-based wheat would be perfect.
The explosive mixture must be carefully
chosen. Muscle weighs more than fat.
That eliminates a salami based explosion.
Meatballs are out automatically— 
You don't want to cause tomato sauce
collateral damage to any registered voters.
Tuna would work if it's not too wet.
This stuff is ghastly. 
I've got it: long, thin strips of lean roast beef.
I'll pay extra for a double helping, tell
the girl with the plastic covered hands
to pack it down hard.
And cheese. American is probably
best, or so my targets think, although most
have Swiss bank accounts created for them
by their oligarch handlers. 
Time to think of condiments. Screw the pickles.
Red onions and slices of jalapeno stacked
on top near the toast so they'll scatter
on impact. I'll need a fuse. Something
with a slow burn that will give me 
a head start. Dark mustard with horseradish
is perfect. After I pay, I toss the package 
up and down, feeling its heft, guessing that 
if it doesn't go off now it must be ready. 
I leave the store and see the crowd 
a block away. With renewed resolve I start 
to walk that way thinking, I really should 
have brought my toothbrush.

The poems of W. Barrett Munn have appeared in print and online in Awakenings Review, The New Verse News, Sequoia Speaks, Soul Poetry, Prose, & Arts Magazine, Book of Matches, Copperfield Review Quarterly, Haikuniverse, 5-7-5 Haiku Journal, and many others.

ON CRUELTY: RILEY MOORE AT CECOT

by Jennifer Browne

What makes human hands unique? The human opposable thumb is longer, compared to finger length, than any other primate thumb. This long thumb and its ability to easily touch the other fingers allow humans to firmly grasp and manipulate objects of many different shapes. —American Museum of Natural History 

1. 

The hand can wield a weapon. The hand can soothe the lost, can smooth a tear-streaked cheek. The hand can navigate a loving body. The hand can pull an infant from a blood-smeared body. The hand can make a meal for a child, can feed a child. The hand can lead a person away from his home by the arm. The hand can pull a hood over a head. The hand can dig a grave in which to place a body. The hand can join in prayer. The hand can hold the grey-painted bar of a cell. The hand can close and lock the door of a grey-painted cell. There is so much to carry, to hold, to grasp. The hand can hold the reins and lead a clattering cart speeding into a ditch. The hand can hold a marker, can scrawl and sign a document. The hand can hold a tool. The hand can hold the tools that crack and crumble what felt sure. The hand can shape itself into a fist. The hand can shape itself into a fist and shake out its futility.

2. 

thumb (n.)—“shortest and thickest digit of the human hand, next the index finger and opposable to the others," Middle English thoume, from Old English þuma, from Proto-Germanic *thūman- (source also of Old Frisian thuma, Old Saxon, Old High German thumo, German Daumen, Dutch duim "thumb," Old Norse þumall "thumb of a glove"), etymologically "the stout or thick (finger)," from PIE *tum- "swell," from root *teue- "to swell" (source of tumor, tuber).

3. 

"Rep. Riley Moore posted photos of himself giving a thumbs up in front of imprisoned people at CECOT, an El Salvador prison notorious for human rights violations. The Trump administration has deported hundreds of immigrants without due process to CECOT, some by mistake. Moore also praised President Trump's handling of immigration in the post." —“Rep. Riley Moore Does Not Belong in Congress,” ACLU West Virginia

4. 

In its base state, the hand is empty.  

5. 

thumb (n.), ctd.—The figure of being under (someone's) thumb "controlled by that person's power or influence" is from late 14c.

6.

Look into the palm of any human hand, any primate hand, and see your own, see yourself. Interlace your fingers and feel the wealth of nerves that let you feel. Think of holding hands, holding faces, your beloved, the innocents within your care. Think of any of the harms you’ve wrought. The speed with which those harms happen, the carelessness.

7. 

We have stood at this door before, this terrifying new.

8.

"The photographs tell it all. In one, Private England, a cigarette dangling from her mouth, is giving a jaunty thumbs-up sign and pointing at the genitals of a young Iraqi, who is naked except for a sandbag over his head…In another, England stands arm in arm with Specialist Graner; both are grinning and giving the thumbs-up behind a cluster of perhaps seven naked Iraqis, knees bent, piled clumsily on top of each other in a pyramid." —Seymour M. Hersh, “Torture at Abu Ghraib,” The New Yorker, April 30, 2004

9.

Look into these photographs. Into whose ears do you want to speak some solace? Whose shoulders do you want to wrap with care? 

10. 

I cannot hold the want of wrath that rises from a place I have no name for in my body. 

11. 

thumb (n.), ctd.—Thumbs up (1887) and thumbs down (1906) were said to be from expressions of approval or the opposite in ancient amphitheaters, especially gladiator shows, where the gesture decided whether a defeated combatant was spared or slain. But the Roman gesture was merely one of hiding the thumb in the hand or extending it. Perhaps the modern gesture is from the usual coachmen's way of greeting while the hands are occupied with the reins.

12. 

There is something that I need to say, need to sing, need to scream into the ears of any who would listen, but the ones who would listen also want to scream. I have no words. There is something I need to say about power, about influence. There is something I need to say about how power swells. There is something I need to say about bloodsport, about the merciless. There is something I need to say about what can be manipulated even out of reach of a thumb, a finger, a hand. Look into these photographs. There are so many who are also raising thumbs, who are saying good, good, who are saying they are monsters. They are monsters. 

13. 

I have too many words. I have no words.

Author's note: My grandmother was born in 1906 in Elkins, WV, a city in West Virginia's 2nd congressional district, currently represented by Riley Moore. 

Jennifer Browne falls in love easily with other people’s dogs. She is the author of American Crow (Beltway Editions, 2024) and the poetry chapbooks Before: After (Pure Sleeze Press, 2025), In a Period of Absence, a Lake (Origami Poems Project, 2025), whisper song (tiny wren publishing, 2023) and The Salt of the Geologic World (Bottlecap Press, 2023).

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. 

AND IT SHALL COME TO PASS

a pantoum

by Kai Thigpen

i am not a weapon to be used

in the destruction of a people

 

for i was a stranger in the land

of egypt

 

even if my people sharpen themselves to steel points

or round themselves into bullets

 

thou shalt not murder

the destruction of a people

a choking silence

muffles rounds of bullets

 

thou shalt not use the name of 

 

genocide

 

in vain

 

a choking silence 

a temple destroyed again and again over so many centuries, so many times it’s all we can point to with our free hands while our other hands are soaked in blood from genocide

 

in the beginning

 

some of us have killed

some of us have been told

“you will not be safe if we do not kill”

 

 

a temple destroyed again and again over so many centuries, so many times it’s all we can point to with our free hands while our other hands are soaked in blood:

my people take the shards of the temple, of every country

we have been told to leave, of every house

in which we have needed to hide

and sharpen themselves to steel points

 

 

we have killed

 

therefore set these words 

upon your hearts and souls: i am not a weapon to be used

in the destruction of a people.

Kai Thigpen is a white, non-binary, Jewish poet and therapist serving primarily LGBT+ communities. They live on occupied Lenni Lenape land, in Philadelphia, with their partner and two fluffy cats. Kai's poetry chapbook, habitat, is available from Illuminated Press.

ON THE EVE OF THE RUSSIAN INVASION

by David Radavich

They amass at the border

as giant snakes and roaches,

men and their killing

machines, poised

to overrun the resistant

creatures of democracy.

 

Every weapon developed

by man is turned toward

usurpation and control,

as if that could solve

anyone’s need,

historic or personal.

 

Imagine the soldiers

in their invented cause

testing the firing pins,

adjusting the angles, feeding

the first ammunition.

 

Imagine the potential 

victims, defiant, sure 

of their innocence, 

not wanting to be yoked

like pliant oxen

at the master's gate

 

Imagine when the war

happens, its final destruction,

random death, a quagmire

of duty and egos in mud

doing battle like scorpions.

 

We wait with mental

swords drawn to cut what?—

air with our hopes

and expectations that cross

before us against the sun.

Among David Radavich's poetry collections are two epics, America Bound and America Abroad, as well as Middle-East Mezze and The Countries We Live In.  His latest book is Unter der Sonne / Under the Sun: German and English Poems from Deutscher Lyrik Verlag (2022).

FOR KAREN, MOTHER OF AMIR

by Jennifer Hernandez

An officer with the Minneapolis Police Department SWAT team shot and killed a 22-year-old man early Wednesday morning during the execution of a no-knock raid, reinvigorating debate around a law-enforcement tactic that many say is ripe for abuse. The victim, Amir Locke, who appeared to be asleep on the couch that morning, was not named on that warrant. In a matter of about three seconds, body camera footage shows the man—buried under a thick white blanket—stirring to the sound of the cops' entry with his hand on the barrel of a firearm. Officer Mark Hanneman then shoots him three times. Interim Minneapolis Police Chief Amelia Huffman initially said that Hanneman shot Locke because Locke pointed his gun "in the direction of officers." But the footage released by the government appeared to contradict that: Locke's gun was pointed to the side, and his hand was on the barrel of the weapon, not the trigger. He owned the gun legally and had a concealed carry permit, according to his family's legal representation. "My son was executed…and now his dreams have been destroyed," said Locke's mother, Karen Wells, at a press conference Friday. "They didn't even give him a chance," echoed attorney Ben Crump. —reason, February 4, 2022. Photo: USA  Today, February 5, 2022

My child is also a deep sleeper.

 

If he crashes on the couch

at the home of a friend

after a night at the club or

making music or playing COD,

his head covered by a blanket

so he doesn’t see or hear

the door open, the strangers

enter the room, the strangers

kick the couch to rouse him

in the pre-dawn darkness—

 

If he wakes in fear at strangers—

If he grabs a weapon for protection—

 

will my son be shot three times

in nine seconds? Will I be left

to wail over his young body?

Will I be forced to fight

for justice? Will I?

Editor's Recommended Reading: "The Burden of the Black Mother"

 

 

Jennifer Hernandez lives in Minnesota with her husband and three sons. She teaches immigrant youth and writes poetry, flash, and creative non-fiction. Publications include Radical Teacher, Rise Up Review, Writers Resist, and This Was 2020: Minnesotans Write About Pandemics and Social Justice in a Historic Year. Her poem "Taco Love" was also featured in Poetry in the Park in the Dark sponsored by the Saint Paul Almanac.

WHAT IS THE AIR?

by Ralph James Savarese

Source: The New York Times archive

An elderly person said, “What is the air?” gasping as much

     with her arms as with her lungs.

How could I answer this woman? I do not know what it is

     any more than she.

I guess it must be a mother feeding her babes little morsels

     of oxygen. A clear, blue bib.

Or I guess it’s the wind taking a nap, the clouds a comforter

     letting dreams rain down.

Or I guess the air is itself an elderly person, death’s new

     confidante. What has it heard?

Or maybe it’s a commuter on the breathing Tube. (The rasping

     sounds like medieval German.)

“Stand away from the doors.”

Stand away from each other! The virus is sprouting in broad

     zones and narrow zones, growing among black folks

     as among white (more among black folks).

“I give them the same, I receive them the same,” a super-

     spreader says.

Perhaps the air is a bathhouse for lungs. All the panting they

     could want!

The Right once denounced promiscuous mingling yet now

     promiscuously mingles itself.

The air, madam, is an unregistered weapon. In America

     everyone carries.

Ralph James Savarese is the author of two books of prose, Reasonable People and See It Feelingly, and one collection of poetry, Republican Fathers, due out in October.

WE THE FAMILIES

by Lao Rubert

Photo: GORDON PARKS / GORDON PARKS FOUNDATION accompanying “Becoming a Parent in the Age of Black Lives Matter,” The Atlantic, June 2, 2020.

Today, I join the tribe that lives in fear
of a son traveling the wrong neighborhood,
knowing he will be watched,
viewed with suspicion
his powerful body seen
as threat only, object for capture.

I join the tribe of families
whose sons, husbands, nephews
have been swept up, swept in,
by the machine turning its massive rollers
over their muscular frames.
                                                                     
I join the families saying,
“Take care where
and how you drive your car,
your body
might be too beautiful.
It may frighten them.”                                      

I join families advising, “Think
where to put your hands if stopped.
Though you are quick, make no movements;
though you carry no weapon,
do not open your glove box.
These are things you must know.”

We, the families,                                                          
wait on the courtroom’s hard benches
as officials toss sentences into the air like confetti          
watching as the crane they call justice
swings its giant arm, its heavy bucket        
over the heads of young men forever standing
in the wrong place.

We listen to guards tell our lovely ones    
Where to stand, to sit
when to speak
how their jump suits must be worn,
their pant legs rolled.

We listen to prosecutors
who have no words written
or whispered
about hope
that hummingbird that keeps a young man alive
when trouble comes clanging in over the rooftops.
Where have they hidden it
and why?              

Lao Rubert is a poet and advocate for criminal justice reform living in Durham, North Carolina. Her poems have appeared in the N.C. Independent, the Davidson Miscellany, the Duke University Archive, the News & Observer and are scheduled to appear in Barzakh in May, 2020.

PRIMARY RANT

by Harold Oberman

Graphic via Nikki McWatters

At this exact moment
It is time to put your sonnets
      On hold.
No lyric musings
Until the Republic is secure,
Until the Senate gains sanity,
Until Justice does justice,
Until November.

“There is a criminal in the White House
Who bullies foreign powers to frame his political rivals”
Does not fucking rhyme with anything
So don’t even try,
At least for now.
“There is a criminal in the White House
Who pardons his cronies who fixed the last election”
Is not a simile, not even a metaphor,
So don’t get clever with it
At least for now.
“There is a criminal in the White House
Who foments hate for political gain”
Is not in iambic, nor even trochaic, so just say it,
At least for now.

Pick up your pen
And jab it in the back of someone’s hand
Goddammit
If they say, “I’m not going to vote on that day,
November Third.”
Pick up your pen
And jab it in the back of someone’s hand
Goddammit
If they say “It just doesn’t matter.”

Scream before you write the lyric.
Howl before you write the sonnet.
And whisper truth to your neighbor.

Harold Oberman is a lawyer and writer living in the midst of the South Carolina Primary. His work has appeared in the TheNewVerse.News  and in the Free State Review.

THE TROUBLE WITH YESTERDAY IS THAT IT'S NOT TODAY EVEN IF IT PLAGIARIZES YESTERDAY

by Dianna  Mackinnon Henning


Palestinian protesters near the Gaza-Israel border. YnetNews

it won’t be the same. The ironic bay window tires
revealing the picturesque—several fruit trees, aspen and
a roly-poly hillside marred with wildflowers. Shades are
more than pulled blinds. All those Palestinians shot
down. Windows break because they’re glass. Flesh is
not iron. It never will be nor does it aspire such. A young
boy’s boomerang is no weapon. They’ll kill him anyway.
Yesterday’s headlines announced hope. The trouble with
hope is that it shifts positions. Yoga doesn’t mean the body
bows like a field of wildflowers in a bilingual downpour.

Dianna Mackinnon Henning holds an MFA in Writing ’89 from Vermont College of Fine Arts. Her work has appeared in The Moth, Naugatuck River Review, Lullwater Review, The Red Rock Review, The Kentucky Review, The Good Works Review, The Main Street Rag, California Quarterly, Poetry International, Fugue, 22 Wagons, South Dakota Review, Trag, Hawai’i Pacific Review, and The Seattle Review. A three-time Pushcart nominee, Henning has taught poetry through California Poets in the Schools. The William James Association’s Prison Arts Program  gave her the opportunity to teach poetry at Folsom and other CA prisons. Henning’s third poetry chapbook Cathedral of the Hand was published in 2016 byFinishing Line Press.

VIEW OF EARTH FROM SPACE THROUGH THE DSCOVR TELESCOPE, AND A FEW WORDS ABOUT TERRORISM

by Bill Meissner

From a million miles away, it looks too blue:
perfectly rounded, haloed with graceful spirals of cumulus,
its continents drifting away from each other
like lovers that long to touch again.

But on its surface,
someone drives into a crowd, detonates a bomb, or lifts a weapon,
cradles it between a thumb and index finger,
contemplates the black hole
at the end of its long, sleek barrel.

The motive is always a little cloudy, yet the incidents repeat themselves:
in malls, in theaters, in schools, in dance clubs, on bridges.
No one can explain why. It’s something
to do with whatever it is that spins,
so red and angry, inside the skull.

There is no sound in outer space.
But here, some days, you can hear it, so close to you,
in the electronics aisle of a Wal-Mart.
Employees in the stock room look up, startled
by what sounds like a hollow box falling from a shelf.

From a million miles away, the earth looks blue as gunmetal—
it’s that same color we see from our back yards
when we tip our heads to the afternoon sky
and stare beyond those swirling clouds
that hide so much pain.

Bill Meissner is the author of eight books, including a novel and four books of poetry. His most recent poetry book is American Compass from the University of Notre Dame Press.  His 2008 novel Spirits In the Grass won the Midwest Book Award for Fiction/Novel.

SLEEPERS

by Mark Danowsky

A family near the Siberian city of Salekhard. A heat wave is blamed for thawing a 75-year-old reindeer carcass, along with dormant spores of anthrax bacteria that infected it. Photo by Sergey Anisimov/Anadolu Agency/Getty Images via NPR, August 3, 2016

Downtown, out front of Great Wall takeout
an unbathed man in an Anthrax shirt leans
against a rucksack with probably his whole life

No, probability tells us the safe bet is tomorrow
the weather will be much like today—

Ice melting in the Yamal Peninsula
far from West Virginia, Russians flee
a resurrected reindeer chemical weapon

—not constancy, though in good times we hope
glacial: the old ways of nature and our wonders

Mark Danowsky’s poetry has appeared in About Place, Beechwood Review, Cordite, Elohi Gadugi, Grey Sparrow, Mobius, Red River Review, Right Hand Pointing, Shot Glass Journal, Third Wednesday and elsewhere. Originally from the Philadelphia area, Mark currently resides in North-Central West Virginia. He works for a private detective agency and is Managing Editor for the Schuylkill Valley Journal.

STAGGERING LOVE

by Jeffrey Cyphers Wright

Cave drawing (Lascaux Caves, Montignac, France)

How cheap is blood, it runs in the streets
How naked is aggression        
Selling its garments to buy a weapon
How high is the high ground
When the flood is a sea of faces
When a sandstorm fills the sandbox
How shall we all get along
Relics of the bone codex
The days grow shorter, while night
Grows a long beard
We are all “bull” fighters now
Prisoners of staged danger
Don’t point the finger at a neighbor
Slay all the dragons with staggering love


Jeffrey Cyphers Wright is a poet, artist, critic, eco-activist, impresario and publisher. He initially studied with Ted Berrigan and Alice Notley at The Poetry Project at St. Mark’s Church, where he also served on the Board of Directors. He then received an MFA in Poetry after studying with Allen Ginsberg. From 1987 to 2000 he ran Cover Magazine, the Underground National. He’s currently the art editor of Boog City and for many years was poetry reviewer for The Brooklyn Rail. In 2014 he won Theater for the New City’s poetry contest. His 13th book, Party Everywhere, is out from Xanadu. Wright currently writes criticism for White Hot Magazine and ArtNexus. He also produces his own art and poetry showcase called Live Mag!