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Submission Guidelines: Send 1-3 unpublished poems in the body of an email (NO ATTACHMENTS) to nvneditor[at]gmail.com.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.
My once-white dog leaps on black legs across thawing mud,
her bearded muzzle iced with dirt. Oh, joy, gusto of dogfulness.
Don’t discuss politics or the foolhardiness of those who rule us.
In my next life, I’ll roll in the spiral cow pies to praise the new day.
Penelope Scambly Schott is a past recipient of the Oregon Book Award for Poetry. Her newest book is On Dufur Hill, poems about the cycle of the year in a small wheat-growing town.
A young male bottle-fed, head-petted, indulged, insulated from common bovine. Aggressive disposition rewarded, elite pedigree admired, need for dominance nurtured.
Let loose, it mounts at will. Out for blood. Horning and pawing dirt, snorting, trying to gore everything in its way.
Humans walk on eggshells, circling periphery, scratching heads, wondering what went wrong. Much too late for dehorning and castration, but they gather keystone and bands, readying to interrupt its flight zone.
pasture grazing—
sickly bellows
scatter the herd
E. L. Blizzard has recent poems forthcoming or in The Other Bunny, Bones, Drifting Sands, Failed Haiku, Autumn Moon, Under the Bashō, Wales Haiku Journal, Femku and Poetry Pea. Over years of nonprofit work, she’s advocated on issues faced by immigrants and refugees, survivors of intimate partner violence in cis and LGBTQ+ relationships, and those experiencing homelessness.
Arizona is reporting the highest rate of new coronavirus cases in the United States, as the state’s governor continues to resist calls to install strong restrictive measures. With an average of 118.3 new cases per 100,000 people, Arizona has become what health officials call the latest “hotspot of the world” because of soaring case loads. —The Guardian, January 7, 2021
Through the cold and shaded
lantana comes a rush
and a buzz from
the hummingbirds
who flash their purple in the grey
morning. The thrasher
recently arrived with a scimitar
beak moves back
and forth between the seed block and
the water while once
the Cooper’s Hawk has been
and gone from the back
wall the African
lovebirds brighten
the air with their hungry calls. The other
news is all
dark suits and hospital
corridors, interrupted by happiness
staged to sell
new cars in a time of travelling
nowhere. Ten
thousand new cases today
in the state. Meanwhile
at the pond the Vermilion
Flycatcher works
the perimeter, and Northern Shovelers
mix with the Buffleheads and Pied-
billed Grebes. Sharp-witted
and shy, the coyote
down to drink
melts his frozen pose and slips
through an open gate,
wearing each moment’s light
as a changing disguise.
David Chorlton has lived for many years in Phoenix, close now to the city's large desert mountain park. He will have a new book of older poems published this year by FutureCycle Press, Unmapped Worlds.
David Southward teaches in the Honors College at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. He is the author of Apocrypha (Wipf & Stock 2018) and Bachelor’s Buttons (Kelsay Books 2020), and winner of the 2019 Frost Farm Prize for Metrical Poetry.
"That 'Triumph of the Will' is a great propaganda film, there is no doubt…” —Roger Ebert
Watching the 'Save America' rallies
for T***p is a reminder that we cannot
do Fascism the way the Germans did
as was captured in that infamous movie
of the Nazi Party rallies back in 1934.
What we see in Washington is a drab,
rag-tag bunch of stragglers, wannabe
warriors for a stumblebum president
clinging to power, any movie made of
their antics would gather the worst of
reviews on Rotten Tomatoes for any
"Trump of the Will" version of an ism
that may come to America by the ballot
box on petit bourgeois feet instead.
George Salamon wonders if the "It can't happen here" argument about fascism is still heard in faculty lounges and Starbucks coffee houses in the blue areas of America.
Former poetry editor for Earth First! Journal, Wild Earth and the Mountain Gazette and current poetry editor for Fungi magazine, Art Goodtimes was Colorado’s Western Slope Poet Laureate (2011-13) and has been poet-in-residence for the Telluride Mushroom Festival since 1981. He retired recently after 20 years as the Inner Basin West’s only Green Party county commissioner. His latest book is Dancing on Edge: the McRedeye Poems (Lithic Press, Fruita, 2019)
Jill Crainshaw is an ordained minister in the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) and a liturgical theology professor at Wake Forest University School of Divinity in Winston-Salem, North Carolina.
John Hodgen, Writer-in-Residence at Assumption University, won the AWP Prize for Grace (University of Pittsburgh Press). His new book is The Lord of Everywhere (Lynx House/University of Washington Press).
For more information about the Boccaccio Project, please click here.
How will our story be told, a world
in mourning for the millions who have died.
Who will write the score for the new
requiem, our sense of loss overwhelms,
day by day we feel the dread of what
may come next. How will a new symphony
hold the pain of pandemic, will the cello
anchor the gravitas with a call to prayer,
will strings of violins rage against
the virus, will the oboe conjure healing
in the slow low notes of a minor key.
Is a musician at her piano today,
arranging chords to evoke
the pain of isolation, the fear of Covid.
Does she know her music will save us,
will redeem our lapses into despair.
I think of composers from the past…
will a new Mozart, Verdi, Dvorak, arrange
dissonant chords to tell this story,
a Requiem Mass for Our World.
Janet Leahy is a member of the Wisconsin Fellowship of Poets. Her poems have recently been published in Halfway to the North Pole, the Wisconsin Poets’ Calendar 2021, and Art in so Many Words. She has published two collections of poetry.
Pencil on paper with typed spoken word by Deidra Suwanee Dees
Dr. Deidra Suwanee Dees is Director/Tribal Archivist at Poarch Band of Creek Indians. She teaches Native American Studies at the University of South Alabama, initiated by the Tribe. She earned her doctorate at Harvard. She is the author of a chapbook, Vision Lines: Native American Decolonizing Literature. Heleswv heres, mvto.
Bonnie Naradzay's recent poems are in AGNI, the American Journal of Poetry, New Letters (Pushcart nomination), RHINO, Tar River Poetry, EPOCH, Tampa Review, Kenyon Review Online, Potomac Review, Xavier Review, and One Magazine. For many years she has led poetry workshops at a day shelter for the homeless and at a retirement center, both in Washington, DC.
John David Muth was born and raised in central New Jersey. He has been an academic advisor at Rutgers University for twenty years. His latest book Dreams of a Viking Wedding (Aldrich Press) was published this year.
