JULY 8

by Lynda Gene Rymond

Last night under my window

I heard a coyote clack its teeth.

Today’s skies grow dark, darker.

Clouds purr at first

but then it’s full-throated growls

breaking to thunderclaps

to shake the house

 

while in the city of angels

men on horseback stalk

like corrupted knights

to intimidate children.

Tactical vehicles prowl.

A small black woman,

Madam Mayor, confronts,

her fury rising like heatwaves.

 

Be furious. Be thunder.

Shake their houses.

Steal their horses, count coup,

paint their dishonor.

Find a mightier pen to wield.

Tell tales that crack walls.

Sing, sing all the way to morning.

Lynda Gene Rymond lives and works on Goblin Farm in Applebachsville, Pa. She is a winner of the Pennwriters Short Story Prize and a multi-year finalist for Bucks County Poet Laureate. Her latest publication, Spellbook, has just been published by Moonstone Arts.

A LESSON FROM SYRIA

by Indran Amirthanayagam

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

At some point on the road you understand
that nothing can stop you from walking ahead,
from drinking the sap of each tree, feeding
the animals and birds, loving each and every 
companion on the planet, even if some want 

to skin, burn and rape you, this is not 
their fault, the murderous rage has a cause, 
a root, and you must do what you can to plug 
the bottle from which the malicious genies
are flying out. So go ahead, vote, write

to the paper, get the school board to listen,
be active, react, take the punch and remain
standing. This may be easy to say but it is
the only way to reply to the tyrant who
will become a bully and then a coward

and will leave by the cover of darkness.
It took twenty four years for Assad, but 
those years are gone and now the chance 
to rebuild. Take it. Look ahead. You are 
alive still and able to teach, to write, to make.

Indran Amirthanayagam has just published Seer (Hanging Loose Press) and The Runner's Almanac (Spuyten Duyvil). El bosque de deleites fratricidas is forthcoming from RIL Editores. He is the translator of Origami: Selected Poems of Manuel Ulacia (Dialogos Books). Mad Hat Press 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. 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.

SALMAN: ELECTION

by Indran Amirthanayagam

“[Salman Rushdie’s wounds] were profound, but he’s [also] lost the sight of one eye... He had three serious wounds in his neck. One hand is incapacitated because the nerves in his arm were cut. And he has about 15 more wounds in his chest and torso. So, it was a brutal attack….The world is going through a very troubled period. I think nationalism is on the rise, a sort of fundamentalist right is on the rise… From Italy to… throughout Europe, Latin America and the US, where… half the country seems to think that Joe Biden stole the election from Donald Trump. And they admire this man who is not only completely incompetent and a liar and a crook, but just a farce. It’s ridiculous.” —Andrew Wylie (Rushdie’s agent) in an interview with El País, October 22, 2022

 

Salman has lost

an eye, an arm

paralyzed, but

 

nobody has

stolen his mind;

he thinks freely,

 

sees, and turns

to see the rest of

what a man can,

 

gazing on the

horizon into

future time

 

on the cusp of

another election

where intolerance

 

rages at the gates

and in Congress,

and he directs

 

his other hand

to write.

Indran Amirthanayagam is the translator of Origami: Selected Poems of Manuel Ulacia (Dialogos Books). Ten Thousand Steps Against the Tyrant (BroadstoneBooks) is the newest collection of Indran's own 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 writes in English, Spanish, French, Portuguese, Haitian Creole and has twenty poetry books as well as a music album Rankont Dout. He edits The Beltway Poetry Quarterly and helps curate Ablucionistas. He won the Paterson Prize and received fellowships from The Foundation for the Contemporary Arts, New York Foundation for the Arts, US/Mexico Fund For Culture, and the MacDowell Colony. He hosts the Poetry Channel on YouTube and publishes poetry books with Sara Cahill Marron at Beltway Editions.

ELECTION NIGHT AFTER DÍA DE LOS MUERTOS

by Jan Steckel

A blazing stateroom of clapping blondes. 

The President dropped the match. The windows 

blew out like a thousand Kristallnachts.

 

My husband slept through the little Hiroshima.

In the morning we’d have to pour into the streets.

I tried to curl up like the cat and snooze.

 

But voices whispered, “Anyone can march. 

Take up your pen. Write an anthem we can

sing again.” Dead poets filled my bedroom.

 

Victor Jara lifted broken hands.

García Lorca slid down a bullet-riddled wall.

Mandelstam starved and shivered in a transit camp.

 

My dead friend, Berkeley poet Julia Vinograd,

read new poems in my dream, turned to me. 

“Open your mouth,” she said. So hear me:

 

Tomorrow some will march, some write, 

and others sing. Though glass and bone shatter,

America will never bear another king.

Jan Steckel’s book Like Flesh Covers Bone won 2019 Rainbow Awards for LGBT Poetry and Best Bisexual Book. Her poetry book The Horizontal Poet won a 2012 Lambda Literary Award. Her fiction chapbook Mixing Tracks and poetry chapbook The Underwater Hospital also won awards. She lives in Oakland, California.

GUMLINES, AMONG OTHERS

by Barbara Simmons

Build-up, they call it, the slow accretion colorless
at first. Later I guess you’d think my teeth had bathed
in egg yolk if I’d let it go that far. Especially if I were smiling today.
But today, I’m not thinking recession as in my gums, but as in
our economy, how the graphs display the V’s that look like troughs
not mountains. Feels too much like my slackline has no anchors,
that I’ll be eternally between, above, not able to begin or end. Reminds
me of those hemlines we called handkerchief, the 70’s loved them, I
loved them, made me feel that I was whirling standing still. More standing
still on stars or footprints or just blue tape lined up outside Target
or the post office, I’m wondering if last night’s dreams are still available,
shelved someplace, line forming here, I’d even pay for their retrieval. Lost
moments, lines breaking up. I’m back inside my mouth, imagining what they’ll
find after I’m beyond words. Not anything as artful as the lapus lazuli
the 1000-year old teeth held, medieval teeth, medieval scribe, medieval woman
breathing in the bright blue pigment, licking her brush while blue began
its residence in her mouth. What would my mouth hold—a piece of jasmine rice,
the inhalation of surprise and joy, the drupelets of a final raspberry, the
exhalation of all the lines I’d thought about and haven’t had a chance to write.

Barbara Simmons grew up in Boston, now resides in San Jose, California—the two coasts inform her poetry. A graduate of Wellesley College, she received an MA in The Writing Seminars from Johns Hopkins. As a secondary school English teacher, she loved working with students who inspired her to think about the many ways we communicate. Retired, she savors smaller parts of life and language, exploring words as ways to remember, envision, celebrate, mourn, and, always, to try to understand more about being and living and expressing her identity and human-ity. Publications have included, among others, The Quince, Santa Clara Review, Hartskill Review, Boston Accent,  TheNewVerse.News, Soul-Lit, 300 Days of Sun, Capsule Stories: Isolation Edition and Perspectives on KQED, the NPR local affiliate. 

WHY YOU CAN'T REVOKE THE DISCOURTEOUS

by Alejandro Escudé

CNN dropped its lawsuit against the White House on Monday after officials told the network that they would restore reporter Jim Acosta’s press credentials as long as he abides by a series of new rules at presidential news conferences, including asking just one question at a time. —The Washington Post, November 19, 2018

Perhaps the solid person—
Perhaps the church on a Thursday night,
Green lights, the bougainvillea,
Or the freeway shrubs, stirred by warm wind,
Cigarette butts moored to the curb like boats.
You can’t predict the evil question
That’ll derail the process. You protect your sanity
However, and from whomever you can.
It’s a dog-day job. A workaday solution.
You breathe in the Venus air. Suspended by hope,
As if hope were the real bootstrap.
You hear the others’ minds; and they clap.
They move closer to one another, penguins
On a beach of stacked memos.
It’s not always clever. You stumble, you weep.
Within the breast, the soul-juice seeps.
Think of gladiators. The clanking of iron suits.
You answer the best way you can.
Because they’re trained, like baseball pitchers,
To throw the curveball, the slider.
You wish it were thrown higher. But it drops.
This is reality for the working class.
You can’t just throw out the ass. You deal.
The pigs take your legs out. The women invite you
To a dozen delectable poisons. You write.
You simplify your life. You hate your wife.
If you try to avoid it, you die.


Alejandro Escudé published his first full-length collection of poems My Earthbound Eye in September 2013. He holds a master’s degree in creative writing from UC Davis and teaches high school English. Originally from Argentina, Alejandro lives in Los Angeles with his wife and two children.