BREADCRUMBS IN A NATION OF LOAVES

by Jazmine Crandall 

 

 

The economic fallout of the US-Israeli assault and Tehran’s retaliation is spreading fast, and pushing the most vulnerable towards disaster. —The Guardian, March 12, 2026 

 

In the marble halls where voices echo  
like coins dropped into deep, indifferent wells, 
they debate the price of labor 
as though it were a frivolous shadow; 
weightless, distant, theoretical. 

Outside, the morning opens its weary eyes. 

A banker straightens his Hermes tie 
that costs more than a week of someone's rent. 
His salary is quite the dome; 
built stone by stone, pension and bonus, 
arches of security rising 
towards stained-glass futures. 

A manager clocks in, 
midway up the ladder of breathing space. 
Her wages are a narrow bridge—
not golden, not broken,  
but sturdy enough to cross the river of bills 
if the current stays calm. 

And then there is the worker 
whose hands smell of fryer oil and sanitizer, 
whose chapped palms hold the ghosts  
of a thousand barcodes, 
and ears fatigue of a million complaints. 

Their meager wage is a candle in winter. 

Each hour they feed the flame, 
yet the room refuses to grow warm. 

And no one says the quiet truth aloud: 
this fire was never meant to heat the house. 

It was meant to prove endurance. 

So the worker learns the mathematics of survival—
how many hours equal a gallon of milk  
and a carton of eggs, 
how many aching hours on torn soles 
and blistered toes equal rent, 
how many meals must disappear 
so the light bill does not. 


Jazmine Crandall is a Colombian-Cuban poet in Atlanta, Georgia. She's beginning her journey of sharing her poetry and strives to make a difference. Her work explores feminism, inequality, and the struggles of immigrants and the working class, using her writing to advocate for marginalized voices.

WE CROSSED

by Zebo Zukhriddinova 

 

 

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

 

I want to speak loud enough for the child who 

packed a suitcase bigger than their arms,


for the teenager who learned the word visa before 

they learned how to drive,


for the mother who ironed hope into a shirt at 3 a.m. before a flight that smelled like goodbye.

I want to speak the way drums speak in a stadium,


the way a voice echoes under bright lights like it refuses to disappear,


the way someone stands at a microphone and 

says:


we are still here.

We did not leave because we hated home.


We left because we loved it too much


to watch it close its doors on our future.

We left because dreams were heavier than fear,


because opportunity whispered louder than 

comfort,


because sometimes survival is not dramatic—


it is paperwork, it is embassy lines, it is a number blinking above a counter


where someone decides if your life may continue.

We learned how to pronounce ourselves again.


We learned that “Where are you from?” can be 

curiosity


or it can be a cage.


We learned to laugh at jokes about our accents


while secretly holding our language like a fragile heirloom


we refuse to drop.

They say immigrant like it is a shadow.


Like it is something that sneaks.


Like it is something that takes.

But we are not shadows—


we are sunrise workers, late-night students,


we are the hands that build and the minds that

 innovate,


we are the children who translate bills at the 

kitchen table


while finishing homework about a history that forgot to mention us.

We crossed oceans, yes—


but mostly we crossed versions of ourselves.


We crossed from who we were told to be


into who we dared to imagine.

And if you ask what we carried,


it was not just luggage.

We carried recipes memorized by heart.


We carried songs our grandmothers hummed 

while sweeping.


We carried photographs folded at the corners


from being opened too often in dorm rooms


where homesickness sounds like silence.

We carried love.

Love stronger than border walls.


Love louder than speeches soaked in fear.


Love stubborn enough to bloom in foreign winters
and call it spring.

Because hate is loud—


it chants, it points, it builds fences out of words —


but love is louder in the long run.


Love studies for exams in a second language.


Love sends money back home.


Love stands in graduation gowns and whispers,


“We made it.”

To the ones who left young—


who traded playgrounds for airports,


who learned currency exchange before algebra,


who grew up between time zones—


this is for you.

You are not “temporary.”


You are not “other.”


You are not a debate.

You are the proof


that hope can pack a suitcase


and still make room for courage.

And one day, when they ask what immigration 

looks like,


tell them it looks like a child refusing to shrink their dream


to fit inside a border.

Tell them it looks like love


walking through customs


with nothing to declare


except a future.

Zebo Zukhriddinova  is an international student currently studying in the United Kingdom.

AMAZON

by Donna Katzin

On Friday [April 1, Christian Smalls] won the first successful unionization effort at any Amazon warehouse in the United States, one of the most significant labor victories in a generation. The company’s response to his tiny initial protest may haunt it for years to come. —The New York Times, April 2, 2022. Photo: Members of the new union celebrated in Brooklyn on Friday night. Credit: Eduardo Munoz Avarez/Associated Press

At the fulfillment center in Staten Island,      

every day a marathon, she logs 30 miles

in 12 hours on the warehouse floor,

wearing worn-out shoes she cannot afford to replace,

picking, packing boxes on dollies and hand trucks

before she clocks out.

Jeff Bezos, back from outer space,

could not finish one of her shifts.

 

Beneath fluorescent lights that never sleep,

during precious seconds between packages,

when her mind fights to focus,

she thinks of little ones

she left before breakfast,

not knowing whether she would

make it home to feed them dinner

or kiss them goodnight.

 

Computers track how fast she picks and packs

on the human conveyor belt,                               

evaluate her by algorithm,

feed back seconds per task,

pieces per minute, numbers to hit,           

speed up without notice or reason,

threaten to dismiss her                    

for missing her target rates.

 

Knees buckle, back rebels,                       

wrists and elbows numb, cramp.          

Stress takes its inner toll,   

presses veins and arteries,                                        

hangs heavy on her heart.

She reports to Amcare,                                  

is given an aspirin,                                           

sent back to the floor.                                       

 

But quietly, between shifts, 

as summer sweats and winter gnaws her weary bones,

she joins coworkers, shares indignities and injuries

by telephone and text, Twitter and Instagram,

in parking lots, food pantries and pews,

dares to tiptoe to a meeting,

whispers the word

union.

 

Donna Katzin is the founding and previous executive director of Shared Interest, a fund that mobilizes the human and financial resources of low-income communities of color in South and Southern Africa.  A board member of Community Change in the U.S., and co-coordinator of Tipitapa Partners working in Nicaragua, she has written extensively about South Africa, community development and impact investing.  Published in journals and sites including The New Verse News and The Mom Egg, she is the author of With the Hands, a book of poems and photographs about post-apartheid South Africa’s process of giving birth to itself.

SELF-PORTRAIT AS A FRONTLINE WORKER

by Laura Sweeney

Portraits of the Pandemic by Steve Derrick of nurses and doctors who have been working strenuously in the effort to contain the spread of COVID-19 and aid patients with the virus.

The Frontline Worker never thought she’d teach  

in pandemic conditions. When she accepted her  

contract, after a gap year of self-quarantine, and  

a zillion Zoom conferences, she thought she’d be  

back in the classroom, sans face masks.  In the spring,  

things were turning around, the energy and activity,  

by May people out and about.  Eating ice cream  

in Uptown Circle, dog watching.  All summer she  

was movin’ & steppin’ & makin’ her way closer  

to home.  Glad to be employed. But by the end of July,  

the Delta variant rampant, the scramble was back,  

to shut down the university, or stay open? She was not  

equipped, not schooled in trauma informed pedagogy,  

but wanted to be part of the movement forward,  

in the trenches.  No, that’s not true.  Even up to  

the first week of class, when Nick the Tech Guy  

showed her around the desk, she braced herself.  

But as he coached her how to use the doc cam, projector,  

PC, “Small things help,” he said, to quell anxiety,  

then shared about his lung collapse. Suggested meditation,  

the Café Music BGM Channel.  That’s what got him  

through college.  The Frontline Worker tries not to  

think about her lung obstruction, or the millions  

of women forced out of the workforce by the care economy.   

Her care is here, a lighthouse for eager young minds  

more afraid of climate change.  And she needs  

the stipend.  Pandemic Unemployment Assistance  

was just enough to get to her first paycheck. The Frontline  

Worker prepares for each session while listening  

to easy jazz or bossa nova.  She wipes down the chalk  

on the keyboard and mouse, from the previous  

Frontline Worker.  The wipes are from the bucket  

near the door, when it’s not empty, set there by  

Environmental Health and Safety.  She spritzes the chair  

with Mrs. Meyers Multi-Surface Every Day Cleaner,  

Lemon Verbena scent.  Practices the mantra ‘get vaccinated,  

act unvaccinated.’ No way to ask students to show  

their COVID cards or wear a badge around their necks.   

And about the food or drink policy, use a straw, under  

the mask.  Anyone who refuses is asked to leave.  

The Frontline Worker teaches four days a week, in-person,  

sixty students, a hybrid model, synchronous/asynchronous.  

She’s socially distanced from them, sitting every other  

in their seats. A sea of half-faces not memorized yet.   

Though she wonders about those absent as she  

peers over her too tight N95 gear, picked up  

in the main office.  Her department distributed masks  

to tenured, tenure track, and NTT faculty, not  

instructors of record, or grad assistants. The Frontline  

Worker took three.  They only last five wearings.   

Still, by March the state is lifting the mask mandate.   

She wonders if there’ll be another surge, another  

shutdown, despite the CDC saying Omicron is abating.  

Meanwhile 43 million children have not yet received  

the vaccine.  Faulty logic. To delay in-person classes  

after the winter holidays, only to go mask free  

by spring break.  But if she speaks up, she’s scolded,  

told to stay in her place. Or moved. She has no authority  

to mandate mask wearing.  Symptomatic.  To focus  

on learning outcomes instead of health and safety.  

So, she ignores the mask wars, relies on her Pfizer  

booster, and a supplement cocktail: vitamin C & D,  

echinacea, zinc, fish oil, a soy protein shake.  More  

concerned about Russia invading Ukraine.  Refugees  

fleeing.  Chernobyl.  Inflation.  The highest in her lifetime.   

More gas and food hikes.  She’s already subsisting  

on a shoestring.  And understocked shelves. Spring break?   

Maybe she can make it.  She needs time for self-care,  

exhausted from pivots & pivots & pivots. She takes  

more naps than usual, fed up with politics & fear  

mongering & propaganda machines. Tired of shenanigans,  

smoke & mirrors, dog & pony shows, window dressing.   

Three semesters she’s taught through this pandemic.   

This semester, two blizzards.  But maybe this is the end?   

As Covid turns endemic. Who knew she could make it  

through Covid-19?  20? 21?  22?  She’s kept herself  

and her students mostly Covid free. Took that spit test  

at Student Health. Not a nose swab, thankfully. Though  

this lighthouse flickers, she’s kept calm and taught on… 

But in this moment, the room is hot. Her words halted.   

Sweat beads her lip. She fights the urge to wipe it. Or  

adjust her mask.  Her voice in abeyance this eighth week  

of classes.  The window’s open a crack, though its chilly.   

Enough to hear the first Tuesday of the month  

all-hazards siren wailing.  To be honest, she wonders  

how she’s not gone mad in these days? She’s trying  

not to go mad. Too tired to go mad.  Is mad.   

Laura Sweeney facilitates Writers for Life in Iowa and Illinois. She represented the Iowa Arts Council at the First International Teaching Artist's Conference in Oslo, Norway. Her poems and prose appear in sixty plus journals and ten anthologies in the States, Canada, Britain, and China. Her recent awards include a scholarship to the Sewanee Writer's Conference. In 2021, she received an Editor's Prize in Flash Discourse from Open: Journal of Arts & Letters; Poetry Society of Michigan's Barbara Sykes Memorial Humor Award; and two of her poems appear in the anthology Impact: Personal Portraits of Activism, an Indie Book Awards finalist. She is a PhD candidate, English/Creative Writing, at Illinois State University. 

ODE TO MY SHOPPER

by Sharon Olson

I was seventy-one and still counting
when I counted the grocery bags arriving
at my front door, each one labelled
I guess for the shopper’s convenience,
some mnemonic only he had derived,
Poems 1 of 8, Poems 2 of 8, and so forth,
and they were like poems, each item
of slightly different size and voice,
tuna can haikus next to sonnets of milk.

I chalked it up to coincidence, until
the next week new bags came, this time
marked Lyric 1 of 7, Lyric 2 of 7, so
we knew we were in some sort of
telepathic, telegrammatic finger-
tapping sync-apathy, as if he knew
I must write poems and would eat
to write them, not eating words
but snippets of lyric, edible syllables.

The market has stipulated one week
between orders, and I am as I said
earlier seventy-one and still counting.
And so I find myself wondering
what the next code will bring, what
subliminal message my messenger
will write to signal our connection.
He must be a poet, too, composing
behind the front lines and so essential.

Sharon Olson is a retired librarian, 71 and still counting. Her book The Long Night of Flying was published by Sixteen Rivers Press in 2006. Her second book Will There Be Music? was published by Cherry Grove Collections in 2019. She lives in Lawrenceville, New Jersey where along with everyone else she waits it out. Her grocery bags truly did arrive marked as mentioned in the poem.

BOXCUTTER BLUES

by Damian Balassone


They put me in these overalls
They put me in these shoes
Yeah, they put me in these overalls
They put me in these shoes
They handed me a Stanley knife
Said, ‘son it’s time to pay yer dues’

Well, the stock is rolling in
And the stock is rolling out
Yeah, the stock is rolling in
And the stock is rolling out
I’m walking like a branded slave
When all I wanna do is twist and shout

Well, mama get me outta here
This ain’t the life I choose
I said mama get me outta here
This ain’t the life I choose
I’m shackled to this factory
Lord, I got the boxcutter blues

Damian Balassone is an Australian poet whose work has appeared in over 100 publications, most notably in The New York Times.  He is the author of three volumes of poetry, including the forthcoming Strange Game in a Strange Land.

NOTRE-DAME DE PARIS

by David Southward





It took nothing—
a smoker’s match, a welder’s spark—
to start the blaze
in my ribs.

You will search
the smoldering grandeur
for some dire cause.
That is your rhythm.

But remember:
the one you blame
is small and frightened, like you.
Like you, my child.

Forgive him.


David Southward teaches in the Honors College at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. His chapbook Apocrypha was published by Wipf & Stock in 2018; a full collection, Bachelor’s Buttons, is forthcoming from Kelsay Books (April 2020).

MADE IN CHINA

by George Salamon

  My granddaughter's kitten stayed with me for a week.
  Her name is Mila.
  She's affectionate and playful.
  I bought her a furry toy mouse at the market.
  She batted it around the living room floor.
  She hid it under a dining room chair.

  She got bored and nestled against my arm next to the computer.
  I picked up the mouse.
  "Made in China," it said on the label.
  Where else, I thought.
  But I couldn't imagine the worker who made Mila's mouse.
  I couldn't see her face, hear her voice, watch her walk.

  I wanted to talk with her.
  What toys did she have when she was little?
  Did she love or hate school?
  Was her third grade teacher like Miss Grundy?
  What did she and her friends laugh about?
  Did her life turn out as she expected?

  I'll never find answers to my questions.
  In the global economy, human voices and fingerprints disappear.
  Transactions mesh into a seamless web without them.
  It's better, that way, for Return on Investment.
  Hansel and Gretel could follow pebbles home to human dwelling.
  There's no path for going back anymore.


George Salamon lives and writes in St. Louis, Missouri.