A TEAR FALLS FROM THE MOON

by Richard L. Matta

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

Hideous weeds hide

in high grasses. Experts examine

lawns with satellites, surveil 

with drones, send in spies.

Intelligent eyes can’t locate 

the wild pests so tap-tap-tap 

go the buttons and neighborhoods 

are bombed and burned and stripped 

bare and young lingering eyes of flowers 

are cut off at the head.

I could ask a question of the wise 

pale moon in the thick evening heat 

but it’s dusted with debris. 

A speaker echoes…

         indiscriminately

                   inhumanity.

And I ask myself is this not a swarm

of bees in the making, generations 

of hate stewing, a turn of minority 

to majority, a dark legacy.

Richard L. Matta grew up in New York and now lives in San Diego. Some of his work is found in Ancient Paths, Dewdrop, San Pedro River Review, Third Wednesday, Slipstream, and many international haiku journals. 

FIVE MONTHS BEFORE THE ELECTION

by Rachel Landrum Crumble

It’s easy to pull weeds from damp soil, 
to power down my front steps and break
a spider’s web and not know the little guy
is hanging on me like a kid grasping 
a kite string, trying not to blow away
on a windy day. 

My point is: we should have done more,
sooner. The weeds have taken over,
yet we topple lesser kingdoms without knowing
by just walking around in the world.

In one neighbor’s house, the TV news
frets the play-by-play of a trial
that’s just concluded. In another house,
the camera’s eye bears witness to the same event, 
except the one on trial is the opposing party.
We have fashioned the media into our own ugly image. 

Truth is on trial, and must sequester
for the duration. We can’t remember whether or not
this is standard fare. We gulp the wind from giant goblets,
still parched. We are too discombobulated to know
we are lost. 

Let’s huddle together. Let’s find communion.
Sure, the wafer is thin and tasteless, but it symbolizes
something we can’t do for ourselves.

Rachel Landrum Crumble retired from twenty years of teaching high school, having previously taught kindergarten through college. She has published in The Porterhouse Review, Typishly, among others, and recently Poetry Breakfast, Humans of the World, and forthcoming in Euphony Journal. Her first poetry collection, Sister Sorrow, was published by Finishing Line Press in January 2022. She lives with her husband of 43 years, a jazz drummer, and near 2 of their 3 adult children, and two adorable grand twins with another on the way.

WINTER RUBBLE

by Susan Kay Anderson

New leaves strive

to take the place

of blossoms

even if they 

don't bear fruit

there are

so many flowers

hanging above

the cold ground down down

winter's tomb

tomorrow's rooftop.  

 

The foreign countrymen spray

into the pushing crowd

marking where the land       breaks       faces

cheeks        eyes        mouths

 

weeds needing killing.  Pulling.  Before sunset.

Rolling    razor wire  

someday we’ll be sitting

at a table remembering  how

saying why.

Susan Kay Anderson lives in southwestern Oregon’s Umpqua River Basin. Her long poem "Man’s West Once” was selected for Barrow Street Journal’s “4 X 2 Project” and is included in Mezzanine (2019). Anderson also published Virginia Brautigan Aste’s memoir Please Plant This Book Coast To Coast (2021).

MEDITATION ON FEAR AND LOVE

by Heather H. Thomas

“Reflected Autumn Light 2 Photograph” by Catherine Lottes

If I say I love god and hate my brother, I must be a liar.

 

Roots protrude over knots of weeds 

and wildflowers overgrowing the path 

 

to the old bench: knife scars. Initials dotted 

with bird shit. Today the ceasefire ended. 

 

Bombs resumed falling on crowded hospitals 

where the attacker says the enemy hides 

 

command centers that must be destroyed. 

The water’s green-black gloss. 

 

Slanted sun flares across it, flashes onto trees. 

Angled, the sun doubles its reflection, blinding me. 

 

For a second my face turns up to the sky 

glaring down. If I cannot love my brother

 

whom I have seen, how can I love god whom I 

have not seen? Quickly I turn away. 

My eyes burn. Behind them the sun repeats 

on my eyelids, retina, optic nerve. 

 

The riverbank is bathed in golden shimmers, 

shaking the leaves, making old branches dance.  

 

Pockets of air vibrate without breeze or wind, 

shaking me. Shifting reflections fracture into 

 

prisms of light flowing far away to the rubble, 

the dead, the injured, the taken, shaking every 

 

stripped-open heart that’s part of it all, the pulsing

downstream, the cross-stream ripple, the light 

 

refracted in this instant, as if the river upended 

and we were all under water. 

Heather H. Thomas is the author of Vortex Street (FutureCycle Press, 2018), and six other poetry collections. Her work has won awards from the Joy Harjo Prize, the Rita Dove Prize, and the Academy of American Poets, among others. Barrow Street; Cutthroat: A Journal of the Arts; Pedestal Magazine; and The Wallace Stevens Journal have published her recent work. Widely anthologized, Heather's poems are translated into six languages, including Arabic. She lives along the Schuylkill River in Reading, Pennsylvania, and has taught creative writing for many years.

TODAY I PLANTED

by Catherine McGuire

Today I planted.

Poked my thumb into thick, unyielding

earth, dropped tiny seeds—

zinnia, sunflower, kale.

Seeds teardrop-size, dry

seeds, brown and dead-looking

seeds too small to count.

I poked and planted; I pulled weeds

that had triumphed on my neglect.

I found I could pull thistle—that monster—

by the base, without harm.

Get the roots. Important.

But plant. Keep planting.

Don’t give up. Ever.

Catherine McGuire is a writer and artist with a deep concern for our planet's future. She has five decades of published poetry, four poetry chapbooks, a full-length poetry book  Elegy for the 21st Century (FutureCycle Press),  a SF novel Lifeline, and book of short stories The Dream Hunt and Other Tales (Founders House Publishing).