The New Verse News presents politically progressive poetry on current events and topical issues.
Guidelines
Submission Guidelines: Send 1-3 unpublished poems in the body of an email (NO ATTACHMENTS) to nvneditor[at]gmail.com. No simultaneous submissions. Use "Verse News Submission" as the subject line. Send a brief bio. No payment. Authors retain all rights after 1st-time appearance here. Scroll down the right sidebar for the fine print.
What is madness but nobility of soul at odds with circumstance? —Theodore Roethke, “In a Dark Time”
At home once in the universe, the old physicist used to weave theories of everything in the cat’s cradle of his mind. How orderly the atoms danced, how fleeting the half-life of years. Wrapped now in rags, his words spoken only to the wind, he signs the language of loss, hands tangled in mudras, like a manic Buddhist, or an operator at the switchboard of chaos, pulling wires, answering calls, frantically making connections on the streets of the fallen.
John Valentine isa retired philosophy teacher living in Savannah, Georgia.
New Jersey had two Jersey Shore towns report wind gusts of 60 mph on Monday night. More windy weather is expected Tuesday. Canva for NJ.com, December 30, 2025
Joy Kreves is a visual artist and poet living in New Jersey. She detests wind and lives with a big, white fluffy dog who everyone assumes loves snow, but he does not. However, he doesn't mind wind, even in large gusts. Kreves wrote this poem on the recent cold, gusty day.
"We support our neighbors and we will stand with our neighbors," Leslie Carlson, a protester, said.
We are born suffused with stardust, not this armload of crumbling charcoal. Hate isn’t underground, it feeds on oxygen. A tinderbox of words erupts like Russian folk dancers. How quickly a poem turns to men in black balaclavas. This is our warning. Fire needs no wind, it is fed by the pause. The wisp and spark not stamped, and mouths bare their teeth. Somewhere another will smother the burning, why else would we let fire taste our own door? But— think of ash, think of diamonds. Grow them here.
A poet and Registered Nurse living in Maine, Nancy Sobanik (her/she) has recent work curated or forthcoming by The Orchards Poetry Journal, Mobius, Chiron Review, Jackdaw Review, Hole in The Head Review and others.A Best of The Net and Pushcart nominee, she is a three-time finalist awarded second and third place in the Maine Postmark Poetry Contest. A manuscript screener for Alice James Books, her debut chapbook “The Unfolding”will be published by Finishing Line Press in 2026. Bluesky: nancysobanik.bsky.social
AI-generated graphic by NightCafé for The New Verse News.
The Moon
picks up a broom
and sweeps the sky clean of war’s shadows.
My dream carries me
through a back alley,
wearing a coat of dust
and a backpack of unfinished paintings.
The rusty cart on the corner
rattles with the echo of nameless days,
and the wind has tucked
passersby’s whispers
into the pockets of rain.
I, with a hand
that may not even be mine,
stir the silhouettes of missiles
into my coffee.
At the bottom of the cup,
a world exhausted by politics
fills and empties
the bowl of “what now?”
And when nothing ever ends,
only
the shape of staying changes.
---
Shirin's Poem in its Original Persian:
کوچه پشتی
ماه،
جارو را برمیدارد
و آسمان را از سایههای جنگ میروبد.
خوابم، مرا از کوچهی پشتی عبور میدهد
با لباسی از غبار
و کولهای از نقاشیهای نیمهکاره.
گاریِ زنگزدهی سرِ کوچه
صدای رفتوآمدِ روزهای بینام را حمل میکند،
و باد، بوی پچپچِ عابران را
در جیبِ باران پنهان کرده است.
من، با دستی
که شاید از آنِ من نباشد،
تصویرِ موشکها را در قهوهام هم میزنم.
تهِ فنجان،
جهانِ ذله از سیاست
کاسهی "چه کنم" را
پُر و خالی میکند.
و آنگاه که
هیچ چیز تمام نمیشود،
فقط
شکلِ ماندنها عوض میشود.
شیرین جبل عاملی
۲۱ مهر ۱۴۰۴
Shirin Jabalameli is an Iranian poet, painter, photographer, and writer. She has authored Crows Rarely Laugh, Apranik, and 101 Moments. Her latest illustrated poetry collection, 25 Fell from the Frame, was recently published. Her poems have appeared in international journals including Braided Way Magazine (USA), The Lake (UK), The New Verse News (USA), and Poetry Super Highway (USA), where she was selected as Poet of the Week.
Trump Tries to Make Sure States Don’t Fight Climate Change, Either: The Trump administration wants to block states from trying to limit the “astounding” costs and impacts of climate change. “This seems to be part of a larger effort to not only do nothing when it comes to climate change but to actively dismantle the climate science and climate accountability enterprise that is being built in response to the costs of climate change that are manifesting in everyone’s daily lives,” says Justin Mankin, a climate scientist at Dartmouth College. —Rolling Stone, May 24, 2025
If I were fire, I’d scorch the world all over. If I were wind, I’d blast its storm-wracked ground. If I were water, I’d make sure it drowned. If I were God, I’d give it Hell forever.
If I were Pope, I’d gleefully endeavor to prank all Christians, just to mess around. If I were Emperor—what then? You’ve found the answer: I’d behead all sorts, whoever.
If I were death, I’d give my dad a visit. If I were life, I’d turn from him and scram. And how I’d treat my mom’s no different, is it?
If I were Cecco—as I’ve been, and am— I’d take the younger women, the exquisite, and leave for other men each vile old ma’am.
Italian Original:
S’ i’ fosse foco, ardere’ il mondo ; s’ i’ fosse vento, lo tempesterei ; s’ i’ fosse acqua, io l’ anegherei ; s’ i’ fosse dio, mandereil en profondo ;
s’ i’ fosse papa, sare’ alor giocondo, chè tutt’ i cristïani imbrigherei ; s’ i’ fosse ’mperator, sa’ che farei ? a tutti mozarei lo capo a tondo.
S’ i’ fosse morte, andarei da mio padre ; s’ i’ fosse vita, fugirei da lui ; similmente faría di mi’ madre.
S’ i’ fosse Cecco com’ i’ sono e fui, torrei le donne giovani e legiadre : e vecchie e laide lasserei altrui.
Francesco ("Cecco") Angiolieri corresponded with Dante Alighieri, and addressed one of his 120 extant sonnets to him. Most of his work is humorous.
Julie Steiner is a pseudonym in San Diego. Her most recent verse translations from Classical Greek, Latin, French, Spanish, and Italian can be found in (or are forthcoming from) Literary Matters, The Classical Outlook, The Ekphrastic Review, Light, and The Asses of Parnassus.
Lithe buffleheads and mergansers Newly down from Canada Tandem dive into the rough blue Potomac
Wind whips the sycamores Causing their spheres of seeds to Dance as clouds race above
Next week Jimmy Carter will lie in state And then Donald Trump returns
Today ducks are diving Let’s just watch them dive
Melanie Choukas-Bradley is a Washington, DC naturalist and award-winning author of eight nature books, including Wild Walking—A Guide to Forest Bathing Through the Seasons, City of Trees, A Year in Rock Creek Park, and Finding Solace at Theodore Roosevelt Island. She has had several previous poems published in the TheNew Verse News and many poems published by Beate Sigriddaughter’s Writing in a Woman’s Voice, including four that have won “Moon Prizes.” Her poetry has also been featured on nature-oriented websites.
Jan Zlotnik Schmidt’s work has been published in many journals including Kansas Quarterly, The Alaska Quarterly Review. Her poetry volumes include We Speak in Tongues; She had this memory (the Edwin Mellen Press), Foraging for Light (Finishing Line Press), and Joseph Cornell: The Man Who Loved Sparrows, co-written with Tana Miller (Kelsay Press). Her poetry has been nominated for the Pushcart Press Prize.
L. Lois lives in an urban hermitage where trauma-informed themes flow during walks by the ocean. She is pivoting through her grandmother-era, figuring out why her bevy of adult children don’t have babies, nor time. Her poems have appeared in Progenitor Journal, In Parentheses, Woodland Pattern and Twisted Vine.
Carrying a jumbo rainbow flag onto the Salem Common under the rainbow arch are Ken Elie, left and Ed Hurley, right of the group Boston Pride, who turned out to support the North Shore Pride group. Joe Brown photo via The Salem News, June 25, 2023
The great Arc-en-ciel Is colorless,
Not on the wing. A heart needs something,
Color needs light, A flag needs the wind—
Whoever’s eternal Rebounding breath
Has deadened with the night, As it often does.
I keep walking Over what was
The parade grounds (What will be the Commons
By the time we celebrate Our independence)
Like an old vet, Though it’s getting dark.
Marion Evalee, a Pushcart Prize nominee, has appeared in The Amethyst Review, Willows Wept, Survivor Lit, The Boston Compass, Neologism, and Montage. A selection of her poetry is featured in the anthology 14 International Younger Poets (Art and Letters, 2021). She lives in Salem, Massachusetts.
After viewing photographs of destroyed towns in the Ukraine
The wind swept away
father’s humming
mother’s crooning
her cleared throatsoft lullabies
her rosaries and prayers.
The wind swept away
babies’ babbling
children’s puzzled cries
scalded and scarred hopes
wheat fields turned to blackened earth.
The wind swept away
unfinished stories
hushed wordssecrets
that once wormed their way
into corners of rooms.
The wind swept away
mud planked floorsfoundations
cracked plaster walls
shattered window panes
bombs exploding like falling comets
In a fierce whirl of fire and ash
the wind swept away
histories, memories, time
present or to be known unfettered dreams
Only voices of survivors remain
asking in garbled tongues:
What is the difference between
dying and living? Where do our shadows take us?
Editor’s Note: This poem arrived at The New Verse News just as we heard news of the dangerous breaching of the dam near Kherson. Although the poem’s central image is wind, it might just as well, we fear, be water.
Jan Zlotnik Schmidt is SUNY Distinguished Teaching Professor Emerita at SUNY New Paltz where she taught creative writing, memoir, creative nonfiction courses as well as American Literature, Women’s Literature, the Literature of Witnessing, and Holocaust Literature. Her poetry has been published in over one hundred journals includingThe Cream City Review, Kansas Quarterly, The Alaska Quarterly Review,Phoebe, The Chiron Review, Memoir(and), The Vassar Review, The Westchester Review, and Wind. Her work has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize. She had two volumes of poetry published by the Edwin Mellen Press (We Speak in Tongues, 1991;She had this memory, 2000).Her chapbook The Earth Was Still was published by Finishing Line Press and another, Hieroglyphs of Father-Daughter Time, by Word Temple Press. Her volume of poetry,Foraging for Light, was published by Finishing Line Press in 2019.
They hang like towels. Towels hung out to dry in the wind line upon line of them blowing in the wind, prayer flags sending thoughts sending blessings wind dried leftovers from days gone by when laundry was line-dried and peace and goodwill were sent as thoughts and prayers on the wind not in the ether.
But in the end it was never enough.
In the end it made no difference how.
In the end
they’re still hung out to dry.
Lynn White lives in north Wales. Her work is influenced by issues of social justice and events, places and people she has known or imagined. She is especially interested in exploring the boundaries of dream, fantasy and reality and writes hoping to find an audience for her musings. She was shortlisted in the Theatre Cloud 'War Poetry for Today' competition and has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize, Best of the Net and a Rhysling Award. Her poetry has appeared in many publications including: Apogee, Firewords, Peach Velvet, Light Journal, and So It Goes. Find Lynn at https://www.facebook.com/Lynn-White-Poetry-1603675983213077/
I say: The Frozen are coming. There is no dry wood.
The fire is going out.
You say: Never mind, Love,
we will make our own.
Katherine West lives in Southwest New Mexico, near Silver City. She has written three collections of poetry: The Bone Train, Scimitar Dreams, and Riddle, as well as one novel Lion Tamer. Her poetry has appeared in journals such as Writing in a Woman's Voice, Lalitamba, Bombay Gin, The New Verse News, Tanka Journal, Splash!, Eucalypt, Writers Resist, Feminine Collective, and Southwest Word Fiesta. The New Verse News nominated her poem "And Then the Sky" for a Pushcart Prize in 2019. In addition she has had poetry appear as part of art exhibitions at the Light Art Space gallery in Silver City, New Mexico, the Windsor Museum in Windsor, Colorado, and the Tombaugh Gallery in Las Cruces, New Mexico. She is also an artist.
