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.

BLOOD OF TIME

by Steve Zeitlin

pierced by a missile, M16 pellet,

arrow, slingshot, or spear, 

 

this time on Ukrainian soil

a dying soldier, 

twisted hands upon on his torso, 

seeks to thwart the going of his life, 

struggles to hold his insides in,

as the blood of thirty, forty, fifty unlived years

oozes from between his desperate fingers –

 

drowning his high school ring of love, 

his wedding and his children—

 

a universal soldier’s sacrifice—

the sacred blood of time. 

Steve Zeitlin is the Founding Director of City Lore, New York City’s Center for Urban Folk Culture, and co-founder of the Brevitas poetry collective. He the author of a volume of poetry, I Hear American Singing in the Rain, and twelve books on America’s folk culture. In 2016, he published a collection of essays, The Poetry of Everyday Life: Storytelling and the Art of Awareness with Cornell University Press.  In 2022, he published JEWels: Teasing Out the Poetry in Jewish Humor and Storytelling (JPS/U. of Nebraska Press).

THE DOOMSDAY CLOCK

by Hallie Dolin

Last Tuesday the pointer moved one second closer 

to destruction. It's eighty-nine seconds to midnight.

Around the world, our weapons wait for our command:

all vigilant, sitting patiently through midnight. 

We hear reports of ever-growing plagues passed on,

although information blackout's our new midnight. 

No one draws wheat from chaff, facts from alternative,

or musters effort like we used to do. Midnight 

and its stifling, sleepless depths—no rest for us—

is a bruise seeping blood, this black and blue midnight.

We snipe over who deserves to rain their revenge 

on whom, whose forfeit lives should dim out to midnight,

but we've missed the point. Your fate is mine, my blood is

your bloodstain. It's eighty-nine seconds to midnight. 

Hallie Dolin is a pathology resident in Cleveland, Ohio and has been writing for fun for nearly three decades. Her work has previously been published in The Case Reserve Review and the now-defunct Flashes in the Dark. When she isn't trying to discover novel cures for frightening microbes, she spends her time working on an actual novel. She also enjoys knitting, playing the guitar, and spending time with her cat. 

WAR IS THE DRUG WE DEAL

by Gordon Gilbert

via The Guardian

As a nation, we send more military aid

to other nations than any other country does.

But it’s all a con game, the old flimflam.

 

The money stays right here at home,

our tax dollars going to corporations here

that manufacture arms, munitions & weapons of war.

 

And those in government take money from those corporations

to keep us at war, when they can, while ever always arming

the rest of the world as well, setting the stage for future conflicts.

 

Fear your neighbors! Distrust their motives!

Anger, hatred will follow. You must protect yourselves!

We can help.

 

Guns sold as peacemakers to one side, then another.

An escalating arms race? More money to be made.

Greed runs amok.

 

War profiteers. Masters of war. Dealers of death.

War is the drug we deal. Addictive. Often fatal.

Ours is the hand of Midas, destroying all it touches. 

Gordon Gilbert is a writer living in NYC's west village.  During the pandemic, he often found solace and an inner sense of peace by taking walks along the nearby Hudson River; now he does so as unwilling witness to the ongoing genocide in Gaza. 

ARREST HIM. DON'T FÊTE HIM.

by Rob Okun    

If Benjamin Netannotajew addresses a disjointed  
session of Congress on July 24 will it be
a day that will live in infamy?
 
You actually have the gall to ask that question!?
Of course it would be.
 
Imagine “Arrest him. Don’t fête him” protest signs popping up across
the country while organizers fill busses from 30 states with patriots
headed to DC to say no way will a wanted war criminal speak in
the People’s house
 
Liberals opposed to the prime sinister will sip wine at fundraisers in Takoma Park
twisting themselves
                                         into impossible-to-achieve yoga positions from
two-state downward dog solution to low down dirty dog final solution
 
“If Israel doesn’t qualify as a true democracy anymore, do we still
have to send them weapons—no strings attached?”
You actually have the gall to ask that question!?
 Yes. We “have” to send them the weapons. If we don’t 
all heaven might break loose—
beginning with an end to the slaughter of Israel’s semitic cousins
 
In this heatwave fever dream, the growing movement of next gen jews
will lead a multigenerational march for peace where it will be permissible 
to use the following words and phrases:
 

38,000…mostly women and children…likely thousands more under the rubble…

humanitarian aid convoys blocked—again…West Bank “settlers” sadistically gone wild…authorities turn a blind eye…they’re committing war crimes… permanent cease fire

 

Note: If possible, however, not to ruffle the feathers of Israeli censors, avoid using 

the words: Palestine… Palestinians… unprecedented number of murdered journalists…

bombed hospitals and schools…starvation…malnutrition…unsafe drinking water…and, 

of course—genocide…

Oh—when discussing the recent daring rescue of four Israeli hostages, absolutely avoid mention of 274 Palestinians killed and 700 wounded. (It is permissible to use the phrase “collateral damage.”)

 
How the hell, you’d be right to ask, has the unlawful firm of Biden, Blinken & Austin
continued to arm this country, ruled by a madman, for so long?
You actually have the gall to ask that question!?
 
There are now—and always have been—Jews who have wept over and still 
weep over the dashed dreams of a 1948 communal Israel-Palestine populated 
by two peoples living side-by-side in a world 
where no one ever heard the word nakba—or spoke
about forced displacement
Is the world ready now—after a full term pregnancy's length of war—
to invigorate that vision...take it from aspiration to realization?
Yaweh and Allah, I hope so.

Rob Okun, editor emeritus of the three-decades old, profeminist magazine Voice Male and editor of the anthology Voice Male: The Untold Story of the Profeminist Men’s Movement, has worked in activist journalism since the 1970s. His commentaries appear in numerous publications and on digital platforms including The Houston Chronicle, Dallas Morning News, Ms., and Common Dreams. He is syndicated by Peace Voice.

SENATOR UNINFORMED

by Indran Amirthanayagam

A U.S. senator calls 

the tents set up 

at universities

camps for Hamas;

and he says

he supports Israel

and if Hamas 

surrenders

and hostages

are released

the war will end.

He adds 

that he is 

deeply 

disappointed

that the President

has paused

some shipments

of heavy weapons

to Israel. Deeply 

disappointed

Senator 

Fetterman?

That is how 

I feel as well 

about you. 

Your ignorance

resounds. This

is not  binary.

Instead 

of pledging 

allegiance to Israel

come what may,

why don’t you 

in turn bow 

to the Palestinian

right of return

to homes from which 

they have been  

expelled since 1948? 

Why don’t you cite 

the ever smaller

wedge of Palestinian 

land, about twenty 

percent of what 

was assigned

to them in 1948?

Can you manage

to turn your head

around that fact?

Twenty percent?. 

One fifth of 

a shrinking pie?

And you say,

hard disagree

deeply disappointed.

Mr. Fetterman

pitch your tent

in Gaza. Wait

for food 

to be dropped

from the sky

Run and hide

when bombs

fall down 

instead.

Indran Amirthanayagam is the translator of Origami: Selected Poems of Manuel Ulacia (Dialogos Books). Mad Hat Press has just published his love song to Haiti: Powèt Nan Pò A (Poet of the Port). Ten Thousand Steps Against the Tyrant (BroadstoneBooks) is a collection of Indran's poems. Recently published is Blue Window (Ventana Azul), translated by Jennifer Rathbun. (Dialogos Books). In 2020, Indran produced a “world" record by publishing three new poetry books written in three languages: The Migrant States (Hanging Loose Press, New York), Sur l'île nostalgique (L’Harmattan, Paris) and Lírica a tiempo (Mesa Redonda, Lima). He edits The Beltway Poetry Quarterly and helps curate Ablucionistas. He hosts the Poetry Channel on YouTube and publishes poetry books with Sara Cahill Marron at Beltway Editions.

RUNAWAY TRAIN

by Lavinia Kumar

The first parents convicted in a U.S. mass school shooting were sentenced to at least 10 years in prison Tuesday as a Michigan judge lamented missed opportunities that could have prevented their teenage son from possessing a gun and killing four students in 2021. —AP, April 10, 2024

The judge says, 

These convictions confirm 

repeated acts, or lack of acts, 

that could have halted 

an oncoming runaway train—

the parents who’d purchased

the weapon, 

the unstable son who had killed

with the weapon,

 

the genocide in Gaza

the US and UK giving

the weapons

repeatedly,

the unstable Israel which kills

with weapons,

repeatedly,

a runaway train

that could have been halted.

 

Will anyone be convicted?

Lavinia Kumar’s latest book is Spirited American Women: Early Writers, Artists, & Activists—very short prose of near 90 amazing women writers, poets, publishers, painters, artists, abolitionists, early suffragettes, and activists.

THE US VETOED A CEASEFIRE IN GAZA

by Bonnie Naradzay

Around noon today, December 16, 2023 a sniper of the IDF murdered two Christian women inside the Holy Family Parish in Gaza, where the majority of Christian families has taken refuge since the start of the war…. Seven more people were shot and wounded as they tried to protect others inside the church compound. No warning was given, no notification was provided. They were shot in cold blood inside the premises of the Parish, where there are no belligerents. Earlier in the morning, a rocket fired from an IDF tank targeted the Convent of the Sisters of Mother Theresa (Missionaries of Charity). The Convent is home to over 54 disabled persons and is part of the church compound, which was signaled as a place of worship since the beginning of the war. The building’s generator (the only source of electricity) and the fuel resources were destroyed. The house was damaged by the resulting explosion and massive fire. Two more rockets, fired by an IDF tank, targeted the same Convent and rendered the home uninhabitable. The 54 disabled persons are currently displaced and without access to the respirators that some of them need to survive. —Latin Patriarchate of Jerusalem, December 16, 2023

The US vetoed a ceasefire in Gaza.  

                        Rushed more weapons.  

We are not allowed to use the word “genocide.”  

            In Bethlehem the nativity scene is piled 

with rocks and debris. More than 20,000 killed.  Biden is angry

about poll numbers.  Paul asked me to bring poems next time that rhyme.  

The newspaper yesterday said, “More Americans own stocks.” 

Homeowners are installing heat pumps this winter.

The US advised Israel to be more surgical.   Hospitals and schools

were targeted with precision.  Two churches, damaged.  Doctors were arrested.

An Israeli official said “There are no churches, no Christians in Gaza.”

People were sheltering in the church.  Hospitals and schools,  targeted. 

Anything that moves.  The US vetoed.  In Bethlehem. 

poems that rhyme.    not allowed.     Poll numbers.  demolished

more surgical next time.   Rocks and debris. 

The US vetoed a ceasefire in Gaza. 

 

Bonnie Naradzay's manuscript will be published by Slant Books next year.  She leads weekly poetry sessions at day shelters for homeless people and at a retirement center, all in Washington DC.  Three times nominated for a Pushcart, her poems have appeared in AGNI, New Letters, RHINO, Kenyon Review, Tampa Review, EPOCH, Split This Rock, Dappled Things, and other sites. In 2010 she won the University of New Orleans Poetry Prize—a month’s stay in the South Tyrol castle of Ezra Pound’s daughter, Mary; there, she had tea with Mary, hiked the Dolomites, and read Pound’s early poems.