INCANTATION FOR THE MIDTERM ELECTIONS

Anti-Hex as Duplex, after Jericho Brown

by Kim Harvey

We are a murmuration of starlings.

Millions move as one, alight in a blue wave.

 

A lighted candle’s flame burns blue at its base. 

Yarrow bloom, salt, and rue to bless and protect.

 

Bless the algae bloom in the Reflecting Pool.

Hate reflecting hate becomes its own fate.

 

The Fates awake to rehearse the verse.

Reverse the curse. There’s power in words. 

 

We’ll be heard. There’s power in numbers. We will

be a herd of zebras, a motion-dazzle.

 

Dazzling and transformed. Painted prayers in motion

from house to house, barn stars in the dark. 

 

In the darkness, we will vote them out.

We are a murmuration of starlings. 

Author’s note: Halloween is hanging in the air along with the midterm elections, and we all know which one is scarier this year. The tight Senate races are leading every news story along with a notable number of Republicans accusing Democrats of being witches. Last week, the Kansas Republican gubernatorial candidate accused his Democratic opponent and her daughter of performing demonic spells on TikTok to try to win the governorship. The same week, when talking about how he's scared the polls look bad for Republicans, U.S. Senator Ted Cruz said, "Right now, if you're a left-wing transgender witch, you hate Donald Trump, and you're going to show up. You're energized." It reeks of desperation and made me want to cast my own spell of protection to repel the hateful rhetoric and keep us and our democracy safe. Honestly, I believe the world can use more magic. Witches or not, let's move together as one, like shapeshifting starlings. Let’s all cast our spells, and—most importantly—our votes.

Kim Harvey is a three-time Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net nominee. She was Associate Editor at Palette Poetry. You can find her work in Barren Magazine, Black Bough, Cathexis Northwest Press, Poets Reading the News, Rattle, River Mouth Review, SWWIM, The Shore, and elsewhere. She is the 1st Prize winner of the Comstock Review’s 2019 Muriel Craft Bailey Memorial Award and the 3rd Prize winner of the 2019 Barren Press Poetry Contest. She had two microchapbooks published in 2020, Facing Gladstone from Kissing Dynamite Press and They Say in Your Dreams Everyone & Everything is You from Ghost City Press. In 2026, her ekphrastic poem "Sonnet for the Night Shift" was selected for a Best of Rattle Award.

THE END OF POETRY

by Raymond A. Mazurek 

if we are the last poets

will artificial intelligence

read

and cry silently to itself

as orange-fingered dawn

rises slowly behind the trees

 

if we are the last poets

will the words

sting

as drones swarm quietly

singing the destruction

of what was real

 

will the trees weep

as the human landscape

recedes

to a memory

in no mind

that knows 

what the words mean

As a young man, Raymond A. Mazurek wrote a lot of poetry, but stopped in graduate school. He resumed writing poetry in the last two years. Many of his poems explore his working-class background. His poems have appeared in The Blue Collar Review, Writers Resist, The San Antonio Review, and The Eunoia Review. Much of his writing explores his working-class background.  His first chapbook, "Lawrence, 1912" and other poems, is to be published in 2027 by Pretzel City Press. He has also published many academic essays and has taught at several colleges and universities, including Penn State.

THE DEFINITION OF HARM

by Pepper Trail

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

The Trump administration on Friday moved to open the habitats of imperiled animals to farming, drilling, mining, real estate development and other activities in what environmentalists characterized as the most severe erosion of protections for wildlife in half a century. It did so by recasting a single word, “harm.” For more than 50 years, the federal government has used a broader definition of harm to animals under the Endangered Species Act, a bedrock environmental law. It included any significant “modification or degradation” of habitat that kills or injures animals by impairing their ability to eat, shelter or breed... But on Friday, the Interior Department and the Commerce Department announced a final rule that rescinded this longstanding interpretation. Under the rule, destroying an endangered species’ nest or habitat would no longer be considered illegal. —The New York Times, July 10, 2026

Time passed and the madman continued.

Today it was to say the home, the whole living world –

I am speaking of you, the owl, the butterfly, the desert grouse—

is nothing, is to be taken, cleared, burned, drilled

and that has no consequence,

as the capture and disappearance of mothers and fathers,

that has no consequence,

as the end of relief for the dark-skinned dying,

that has no consequence,

as the meanings of words,

they have no consequence.

To the madman it is all a game,

made up every night, announced every morning,

changed every afternoon,

himself against the world, the only rule

being that he must never lose,

if only he knew how to win, to be satisfied.

And so everything is fed into the flames,

the beautiful world, the work of the best minds,

the lives of the children and the artists

and those who want only to live in peace,

because anything free of him

must be brought to heel, or

when that again,

when that always, fails,

must, he delares, be destroyed.

Pepper Trail is a poet and naturalist based in Ashland, Oregon. His poetry has appeared in Rattle, Atlanta Review, Spillway, Kyoto Journal, Cascadia Review, and other publications, and has been nominated for Pushcart and Best of the Net awards. His collection Cascade-Siskiyou was a finalist for the 2016 Oregon Book Award in Poetry.

SAVE YOUR BREATH

by A J Dalton

 

 

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

They    put   tariff    words now
So   ll use 10% less
God help     hyperverbal
–they    probably end    homeless
 
Marketing    all visuals now
Cos   picture paints   1000
Or strange performance pieces
    actions speak louder,      say
 
Some took   vow    silence
There are fewer arguments truly
   , it   wasted breath
Yet   never hear ‘  love you!’
 
  fear     proposed tariff    space next
As immigration needs controlling
This poem   gone    too long though
And cost      flaming fortune!


A J Dalton is a UK-based writer. He’s published the Empire of the Saviours trilogy with Gollancz Orion, The Satanic in Science Fiction and Fantasy with Luna Press, the Dark Woods Rising and Green Man Ascendant poetry collections with Starship Sloane, and other bits and bobs. He lives with his monstrously oppressive cat named Cleopatra.

A VALENTINE FOR MINNEAPOLIS

by Lisa Shulman

 

I love the crunch of your boots in the icy streets,

the rhythmic beat of your mittened hands,

the steam of your breath and the heat of your words 

in this brutal cold and ice-clapped world.

I love the chapped red of your cheeks, your dripping nose

the ice crystals on your eyebrows, your hair,

as you carry signs and bags of food and offer your arm

to that woman on the ground.

I love the street medics with their packs,

the rolling neighborhood patrols,

and the cafes open for free soup and coffee.

I love your cousins in Chicago, Portland, L.A.

I love the way you bang on drums, on cans and dumpsters,

your raucous all-night singing,

your harmonies as you kneel on frozen sidewalks,

your whistles and car horns.

I love your walking school buses,

your inflatable frogs, and knit red hats.

I love the warm and flowing river of your bodies

pouring through your city—

blood pulsing through its veins.

I love your courage that ignites our own,

fire melting ice.

I love your heart.

 

 

Lisa Shulman is a poet, children’s book author, and teacher. Her poetry has appeared in Sheila-na-gig, About Place, Anacapa Review, Inkfish, Kitchen Table Quarterly, New Verse News, and elsewhere. Her new chapbook is Fragile Bones, Fierce Heart. A Pushcart nominee, Lisa teaches poetry with California Poets in the Schools, and workshops for women in recovery.

TO THE REPUBLIC

by Athena Kildegaard

It is hard, right now, to think

of America, my country, it no longer
holds together inside its borders. 
Four decades ago, every school day, 
I asked one of the twelve-year-olds
in my charge to lead us in the Pledge
of Allegiance. It was the law, this recital.
As good a way as any, I thought, to begin.
Words, words, slippery as jello cubes,
hardly join, now, to anything real.
My heart beats, my hand firms itself
to my chest—this friction, this viva—
but my tongue dare not lift, my lips
not open, my body not burst
with air, with light. America, where
have you gone?

You are in Minneapolis,
America, handing out scarves and hats,
standing beside your neighbors, lifting
whistles to your lips because your lips
have power, your breath has power,
you are teaching us how to be Americans.

Athena Kildegaard is the author of six books of poetry, most recently Prairie Midden (Tinderbox Editions), winner of the WILLA Literary Award. 

OILING THE WHEELS

by Lynn White

Art by Shields

The days of saving

Vietnam from Vietnamese

or Afghanistan from Afghanis,

are here again.

‘We’ will run things

especially

in countries of long words

like Palestine and Venezuela.

Democracy is another of them.

short words like ‘we’, ‘US’ and ‘oil’

will save Venezuela from Venezuelans.

An unelected foreign government

will save Venezuela from elections. 

Oh, the words are getting bigger again,

Venezuela and democracy are very big words

so we must run things there,

to oil the wheels of democracy,

or something like that,

and, with nice short words,

save Venezuela from Venezuelans.

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.

AVERAGE DAY IN AMERICA

by Tina Williams

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

I’m not hearing so well lately 

and as my audiologist enters 

values on her computer 

my eye catches her cup 

which has a goat on it 

and I remember the time

I was at the coffee shop

named for a ruminant 

and there was a woman 

sitting outside

with a latte in one hand, 

paperback in the other, 

and a goat jumped 

on her table and with 

one jerk snatched 

the book and began

to eat it, whole 

chapters at a time, 

looking her in the eye 

all the while while 

everyone watched.

What could any of us 

have done at such 

a moment in history?

It was an average day.

All the words were there. 

Then they were not.

 

Tina Williams lives in Texas where the ACLU tirelessly monitors and battles the banning of books from libraries.

ENDANGERED SPECIES / WHAT DOES IT FEEL LIKE?

by Dick Altman

An Indonesian father of an infant with special needs, who was detained by federal agents at his hospital workplace in Minnesota after his student visa was secretly revoked, will remain in custody after an immigration judge ruled on Thursday that his case can proceed. The day before [Aditya Wahyu] Harsono’s bond hearing, DHS disclosed their evidence against him. Besides stating that his visa had been revoked for the misdemeanor graffiti conviction, for which he paid $100 in restitution, they also mentioned an arrest from 2021 during a protest over the murder of George Floyd. That charge was dismissed. Harsono is Muslim and frequently posts on social media in support of humanitarian relief for Gaza. He also runs a small non-profit, which sells art and merchandise, with proceeds going to organizations aiding Gaza. —The Guardian, April 29, 2025. Peyton Harsono (pictured above) and Madison Weidner have organized a GoFundMe to support Harsono’s family in these dark days.

I dream,

every now and then,

of an army newsreel

the colonel

across the street,

shows

two ten-year-olds,

his daughter and me.

We are old enough,

he says,

quoting Burns,

to witness “man’s

inhumanity to man,”

a phrase lost on us,

until he turns down

the basement lights,

and the 16-mm film

begins to unwind.

 

It opens

on a city street

of old buildings,

older than anything

I know of America.

The sidewalks busy

with baby carriages,

people shopping,

children skipping.

When,

out of a doorway,

two men abruptly

drag a man

into the street.

They punch him,

until he falls

to the ground,

and then begin

to kick him.

We can only stare.

The colonel,

as if reading

our minds,

says

they’re beating him

because he’s Jewish.

And the voiceover

starts to explain.

*

When I awaken,

my mind grinds

incessantly

on the words

endangered species.

Grinds on the video

of a woman in white—

a student protester

of foreign extraction,

here in America—

converged upon

by three men in black,

who arrest her.

A chilling reminder

of the colonel’s

newsreel.

Echoing

across the nation’s

landscape,

across mountain,

prairie and sea.

 

Endangered species.

My mind trembles

over the syllables,

as I imagine them

enclosing themselves

around the laws

and institutions

that nourish

and drive

our democracy.

 

Endangered species.

I strangle on the words,

here in Indian Country,

where a holocaust

nearly drove a people

into extinction.

We have a history,

I say to myself.

Can we,

as a nation,

change course?

I can almost

imagine

a raging knock

at the door,

as I write.

“You and

your words—

they’re coming

with us,”

I hear

a voice yell.

 

And I think

of the eyes

that might read

these thoughts.

And of the lines

and lives

that didn’t survive

during

and between

last century’s

Great Wars.

And I confess—

I fear those eyes.

 

 

Dick Altman writes in the thin, magical air of Old West’s high desert plains, where, at 7,000 feet, reality and imagination often blur. He is published in the American 

Journal of Poetry, Santa Fe Literary Review, Fredericksburg Literary Review, Foliate Oak, Landing Zone, Cathexis Northwest Press, Humana Obscura, Haunted Waters Press,

Split Rock Review, The Ravens Perch, Beyond Words, and others here and abroad. His work also appears in the first edition of The New Mexico Anthology of Poetry, published by the New Mexico Museum Press. Pushcart Prize nominee and poetry winner of Santa Fe New Mexican’s annual literary competition, he has authored some 250 poems, published on four continents.