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Submission Guidelines: Send 1-3 unpublished poems in the body of an email (NO ATTACHMENTS) to nvneditor[at]gmail.com.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.

Tuesday, December 14, 2021

MAYFIELD

by Donna Katzin


In this photo taken by a drone, buildings are demolished in downtown Mayfield, Ky., on Saturday, Dec. 11, 2021, after a tornado traveled through the region Friday night. Ryan C. Hermens/Lexington Herald-Leader via AP


Where cold and warming winds collide,
twisters—minions of an angry earth—                    
lash out in pain, flatten farms, homes,
houses of work and worship in their paths.
As roofs rain bricks in darkness,                               
mothers, fathers, sons, daughters,
sisters, brothers sit in cellars,                                               
making calls never returned.
 
When the wild ones have gone, survivors pick
through mauled metal, shredded remains.       
A bus lies on its back—a turtle shell
with the body sucked out.
Splintered ghost trunks rise  
like hands to heaven.
There are no voices now.
Even wind has no words.
 
Cadaver dogs sniff through rubble.
Crews root around the clock
for what is left of men and women
who worked the late shift,
even after alarms screamed,
for twelve dollars an hour
making candles to light consumers’ holidays       
at the factory now extinguished.                   
 
On Sunday morning, faithful gather,
console and hold each other,
interrogate the Almighty,
sing hymns of hope
to staunch despair.  
A few pray for the mother
planet we torture at our own peril—
who will not be patient forever.
 
 
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.

SATURDAY

by John Guzlowski


Mayfield, KY Daylight Drone Footage Aftermath - December 11, 2021


Where I sit, the world 
is quiet, unassuming.  
Snow falls & becomes 
rain, rain falls 
& becomes snow.  

I write on a pad of paper 
& think of the tea  
steeping in the cup next to me.

200 miles away in Kentucky 
The wind shook the world
And my friends died.


John Guzlowski's poems and stories have appeared in North American Review, Ontario Review, Rattle, Atlanta Review, Nimrod, Crab Orchard Review. Garrison Keillor read his poem “What My Father Believed” on his program, The Writers Almanac.  Guzlowski's poetry book Echoes of Tattered Tongues won the Eric Hoffer/Montaigne Award for most thought provoking book 2017. He’s also the author of the Hank and Marvin mysteries. Now settled in Virginia, Guzlowski lived in Kentucky for a while.

Monday, December 13, 2021

BEFORE ROE V. WADE

by Marsha Owens




i knew that girl
who rode my bus,
raped by her uncle
who told us dirty jokes.
neighbor women whispered...
only twelve, gone to the home.
 
i knew the home
out of town
on the highway, for girls
who got themselves pregnant
like they caught a cold
for not wearing a jacket.
 
i didn’t know
the girl i passed downtown,
defiant chin lifted to catch
cooling air in the wrinkles
of her shiny black neck,
like road tar melting
on a hot july day, baby
in her 14-year-old belly.
 
i knew my whiter-than-white
neighborhood looked away
as i hung my white blouse 
in the closet,
coat hangers jangling
impatience like little girls
who just want to go outside
and play.
 
 
Author's Note: I came of age in the 1960s, and suddenly the world was upended... Vietnam, birth control, and in the 70s, RvW. The 1950s seemed like ancient history in many ways. I grew up in the South in a white neighborhood, but we didn’t use the word ‘segregated.’ Black people lived ‘downtown’ or ‘in the country.’ Now I feel like I’m living in a time warp as Roe v. Wade is, apparently, about to be overturned, and African Americans are once again, being lynched. 


Marsha Owens is a retired teacher who lives and writes in Richmond, VA, and at times, along the banks of the beautiful Chesapeake Bay. Her essays and poetry have appeared in both print and online publications including The Sun, The Dead Mule, Huffington Post, Wild Word Anthology, Rat’s Ass Review, Rise Up Review, PoetsReadingtheNews, and The New Verse News. She is a co-editor of the poetry anthology Lingering in the Margins, and her chapbook She Watered Her Flowers in the Morning is forthcoming from Finishing Line Press.

Sunday, December 12, 2021

Remembering Michael Nesmith
(December 30, 1942 – December 10, 2021)

by Jeannie E. Roberts


The Monkees Farewell Tour with Michael Nesmith & Micky Dolenz
Sunday, November 14, 2021, The Greek Theatre, Los Angeles CA


It was 1967, the year deafening screams overpowered the St. Paul 
Auditorium as The Monkees performed for us and thousands 

of other teeny boppers. I was eleven and lucky enough to attend 
the concert with my older sister, Mary, and our neighbor friends, 

Linda and Lisa. I recall wearing a mod-style dress, a shapeless 
shift with vertical stripes in red and yellow. My purse matched 

and attached to a faux gold, chain-link handle. I felt hip 
in my tween-modernness as I waited to hear my favorite song 

“Daydream Believer.” Instead, an audience of shrieking girls 
made inaudible the four young men on stage. Even so, 

their goofy antics offered a visual component to the performance. 
Like their TV show, the band members wore capes 

as they leapt across the proscenium with youthful effervescence. 
After an hour or more of ear-piercing noise, 

our hearing wasn’t quite the same. Still, it was worth it. 
I liked Michael, the tall, introspective Monkee, the 12-string 

electric guitar player who wore a forest green wool hat 
with pompom. Hired for his vast musical talent, he was also a poet. 

To me, Michael Nesmith seemed kind, thoughtful, and authentic, 
in the end, qualities that really matter.


Jeannie E. Roberts lives in Wisconsin, where she writes, draws and paints, and often photographs her natural surroundings. She’s authored seven books, five poetry collections and two illustrated children's books. Her newest collection, As If Labyrinth - Pandemic Inspired Poems, was released by Kelsay Books in April of 2021. Her poems appear in Anti-Heroin Chic, Sky Island Journal, The New Verse News, and elsewhere. She’s an animal lover, a nature enthusiast, a Best of the Net award nominee, and a poetry editor of the online literary magazine Halfway Down the Stairs

Saturday, December 11, 2021

DELIVERED

by Julian Matthews


“Dinner With Friends” Painting by Victoria Coleman


A poem on our first meeting after being in a writing workshop on Zoom for six weeks, and in various lockdowns for a year and ten months.


And so we sit at the table partaking of a meal,
the home-made, home-cooked, home-delivered
a gathering of friends, new and old,
unmuted, unzoomed, live, in-person, fully embodied,
greeting each other like refugees
meeting on the dock, our boats having survived
the treacherous crossing of middle class suburbia
and stepping back onto the shores of human connection again, 
wetting our cold feet and lapping up warm chatter about pets, 
pasta, pastries, prices, politics and the pandemic, always the 
     pandemic,
and, thankfully, of our common love of books, and writing and 
     poetry
and missing sitting in darkened theatres with strangers, to watch 
     a movie,
or a play or just chilling with a warm-up, pre-concert cocktail, 
     perhaps a long island tea, 
or two, before listening to an orchestra, fingers fondling keys, 
     bows caressing strings,
lips pressed against mouthpieces, hugging tubas, the tsk-chizz 
     of sticks on cymbals, 
being enveloped by the sensurround sounds of music played by 
     real, in-the-flesh humans...

And in the end there is laughter, ribbing and the teasing out
of each other's backgrounds, our reasons for being, why the 
     need to put words
on rectangular screens, this unboxing of the isolation inside us, 
     this shedding of thickened skins,
double-vaxxed, immunized, and unmasked, fully ensconced in 
     that most singular of human acts,
the Art of Conversation, manifesting our ancestral DNA of 
     gathering around the embers of dying
fires under stars, trading stories, sharing opinions and yes, even 
     gossiping,
just to know we are alive, 
we are still alive.


Julian Matthews is a former journalist finding new ways to express himself in the pandemic through poetry, short stories and essays. He is published in Beltway Poetry Quarterly, Nine Cloud Journal, Poor Yorick Journal, Borderless Journal, Second Chance Lit, Poetry and Covid, the anthology Unmasked: Reflections on Virus-time (curated by Shamini Flint), cc&d magazine, a Scars Publication, and forthcoming in the American Journal of Poetry. He is based in Malaysia.

Friday, December 10, 2021

THE USUAL AMERICAN ELEGY

by William Doreski




In Michigan, another school
shot up by vain disgruntlement.
The freshly dead were tossed aside
by the rush of unbridled history.
I’ve never fondled a gun
with the affection that’s its due.
 
I’ve never savored the death
of a twelve-point white-tail stag
or even a rabbit hopping
toward its fate in a tasty stew.
The boy who fired that pistol
wanted to kill for reasons
 
I probably shared at his age.
But the guns my great-uncles gave me
to make a man of me remained
unloaded, unloved in my closet.
Later I gave them to an aunt
who liked to kill small animals.
 
Today the wind ruffles the pines
with affection absent from life.
The cold challenges my parka
with its warped and stubborn zipper.
I should wander deep in the woods
with orange safety vest averting
 
bullets from careless hunters.
A hundred people shot to death
every day in our enchanted world.
I keep an empty brass cartridge
on my desk to remind me that
like Mayakovski I could shoot
 
myself anytime I wish.
I don’t wish. The blowing dawn
brings a pale layer of blue,
and the ruined families of the dead
face another day of absence
indifferent to the winter sun. 


William Doreski lives in Peterborough, New Hampshire. He has taught at several colleges and universities. His most recent book of poetry is Mist in Their Eyes (2021). He has published three critical studies, including Robert Lowell’s Shifting Colors. His essays, poetry, fiction, and reviews have appeared in various journals.

Thursday, December 09, 2021

FAMILY PHOTO

by Rémy Dambron


The following poem comments on the deranged photos of Republican politicians and their children holding weapons of war.  We shall not post these photos. Instead, in union with  MeidasTouch.com, we memorialize the teens who were murdered recently in Michigan due to the Fascist fetishization of guns: Hana St. Juliana, 14, Tate Myre, 16, Justin Shilling, 17, Madisyn Baldwin, 17.


this year 
for christmas
a family poses 
in front of their sparkling tree

for a holiday picture with their loved ones:

mr. m60 as head of household
mrs. thompson semi-auto as his loyal wife
m16, m4, ar-15 as their model children
and of course their youngest, 
little uzi.

their white teeth shining 
through their grins with pride 
wishing us more than just a

“merry christmas”

their eyes ecstatic 
their appetites indulged
their hearts content  

together, their stockings waiting to be filled,
they ask santa:

“please bring us ammo”

together, fully loaded, 
their bullets will number in the hundreds.

together, fully loaded,
they can unleash holy hell in a matter of seconds.

together, unloading on our gaze,
they gloat 
they glorify
they galvanize.

merely days after the latest killing 
spree school day

together, for christmas,
they remind us

this is america.


Rémy Dambron is an English teacher and poet whose writing focuses on denouncing political corruption and advocating for social/environmental justice. With the help of his chief editor and loving wife, his works have appeared in What Rough Beast, Poets Reading the News, Writers Resist, Society of Classical Poets, Robot Butt, and New Verse News.

Wednesday, December 08, 2021

AFTER THE SUPREME COURT HEARS TESTIMONY ABOUT MISSISSIPPI’S LEGISLATION RESTRICTING A WOMAN’S RIGHT TO CHOOSE

by Katie Kemple


Cartoon by Walt Handelsman, The Advocate


I dream I’m in an auditorium about to see
a show. To the far left, in the dark, sits
Gloria Steinem, her signature straight
hair beneath the twin stems of her aviator
glasses, so calm and beautiful. Even the host
makes eyes at her, tries to grab her attention.
On stage, they roll out a gurney, the lower
half of a woman’s body. I can't see her face.
Others gather around—men from all over
the world, a type of ceremony. I find
my mother and sit behind her, slide
my arm through the space between chairs
to interlock fingers with her. I whisper:
"Gloria is here." But my mother has been
dead for seven years. I'm afraid of what
we're about to see. It's so dark. I can't see. 


Katie Kemple (she/her) writes to make sense of the world. Her work has appeared recently on Longleaf Review, Matter, and The West Review.

Tuesday, December 07, 2021

OUTLIER

by Bonnie Proudfoot


Cartoon by Clay Jones


Outside, the chirping of birds is erased
by sirens and the latest newsfeed delivers
the latest news, the camera goes back
to school for this one, what a bitch,
some shy 15-year-old, his heart tethered
to his gun, uses lead for his brand of graffiti,
he wants to be a daredevil, a showstopper,
a level up in the (anti-) social strata
Columbine, Sandy Hook, Parkland,
new codes for manhood. Maybe
he was always an outlier,
maybe instead of a pet ocelot,
his dad bought him a Black Friday pistol,
he posts his picture on Facebook the next day
some ephemeral way to prove that
someone loves him.
 
In the hallway, the slaughter.
Bullets crisscross the walls,
Bodies left to bleed out on the floor,
outside a classroom door,
a voice calls, It’s ok, bro,
it’s the police you can come out now,
But the other students
have too much skin in the game,
stagger out the back window, shake. We
see the flowers, a few more crosses
on the roadway, messages of what’s
at stake. Meanwhile in America,
Kyle Rittenhouse walks free,
Parkland students protested,
but some in the US Congress denied
that shooting even happened. We
will see gun sales spike before Christmas,
Today, it’s hunting season in Ohio,
shots ring out in the woods,
the birds become silent. Sometimes I
can’t tell where the shots are coming from,
where they are headed.


Bonnie Proudfoot is a recipient of a Fellowship for the Arts in Creative Writing from the West Virginia department of Culture and History, and has had fiction and poetry published in The Gettysburg Review, Kestrel, Sheila-Na-Gig, Pine Mountain Sand and Gravel, and other journals. Her first novel, Goshen Road, was published by Swallow Press in January of 2020, and was selected by the Women’s National Book Association for one of its Great Group Reads for 2020.  The novel was also long-listed for the 2021 PEN/ Hemingway award for debut fiction.

Monday, December 06, 2021

QUESTIONS FOR MY FELLOW MUSLIMS

by Hafsa Mumtaz


Up to 120 people have been arrested in Pakistan after a Sri Lankan factory manager was beaten to death and set ablaze by a mob [in Sialkot, Pakistan] who accused him of blasphemy, officials said on Saturday. The vigilante attack has caused outrage, with Prime Minister Imran Khan calling it a "day of shame for Pakistan". Few issues are as galvanising in Pakistan as blasphemy, and even the slightest suggestion of an insult to Islam can supercharge protests and incite lynchings. The incident took place on Friday in Sialkot, a district in central Punjab province, about 200 kilometres (125 miles) southeast of the capital Islamabad. Police on Saturday said that the manager was killed after it was rumoured that "the manager has committed blasphemy". —AFP, December 4, 2021.  Photo: Police officers stand guard at the site where a Sri Lankan citizen was lynched by a Muslim mob outside a factory in Sialkot, Pakistan [Shahid Akram/AP Photo via Aljazeera]


amidst the stampede of melancholy and rage,
i write to seek an answer, i write to inject some
sense into the disciples of schadenfreude, i write
to vent out my grief, i write to know why are
we (the Muslims) becoming what our religion
refrains us from, and that too in the name of religion.
i remember writing about the filigree-tender
baroque mesh in the gossamer, i remember writing
about sweet moments of childhood, i remember
writing about bibliophilia, i remember writing
about solace i'd seek from a genuine smile on
my parents' faces, and i remember how the
world was delicate and pleasing like candy floss
until i never stepped into the traumatizing gulf of
news. i remember my Islamic Studies teachers telling
me forgiveness is more appreciated by Allah S.W.T.,
than vengeance. i invite all Muslims to this rant poetry
about what my vigilante fellows did in Sialkot to the
factory manager who was accused of blasphemy.
why are we turning into beasts when our
Beloved Prophet Muhammad (S.A.W.W.) forgave the
woman who threw trash on Him (S.A.W.W.) everyday,
and rather went to see if she was okay the day she
didn't. He (S.A.W.W.) even looked after her for she was
sick the day she didn't throw trash on Him (S.A.W.W.).
i implore answers. are we, our Prophet's Ummah, more
noble than Him that we dared to lynch a man to death
who was accused of blasphemy? are we truly
His (S.A.W.W.) Ummah when we publicize our virtues
and justify our sins by twisting the reality, by
wrongly quoting Islamic injunctions on purpose to
our benefit? are we actually worthy of calling ourselves
"Muslims" when all that we do stands in strict
contradiction to Islam? do we not know that we should
have left the matter to the law for we do not live in
a jungle? do we not know if we think that blasphemy
would be taken for granted, we can leave the matter to
Allah's (S.W.T.) court for He is the ultimate Adil (Just)?
do we not believe that Allah (S.W.T.) will deal with it
Justly on the Day of Judgement? do we not understand
what is a genuine faith? Islam is the name of love, 
of patience, of the greater good, of peace,
of wisdom, of forgiveness, of humanity, of generosity,
and all the good that ever existed or will ever exist.


Author's Glosses:
S.A.W.W. - Sallallahu Alayhi WaAalehi Sallam (May Allah's prayers and peace be with him).
S.W.T. -  Subhanahu Wa Ta'ala (The most Glorified, the most High) 
Ummah - the whole community of Muslims bound together by ties of religion.


Hafsa Mumtaz, aged 22, is an emerging Muslim writer from Pakistan, with a bachelor in English Language and Literature. Her poetry has been published in Visual Verse, The Rising Phoenix Review, Women’s Spiritual Poetry, The New Verse News, Poetry Potion, Autumn Sky Poetry Daily, Terror House Magazine, Ravi Magazine, The Sandy River Review, and has appeared or is forthcoming in Couplet Poetry, and Corvus Review. Her short story "Vulture" is available on Reedsy Prompts.

Sunday, December 05, 2021

EYES FORWARD

by Darrell Petska




Ai-Da wears a woman’s head,
speaks in a woman’s voice.
She can paint, sculpt, wax poetic, even
expound on Picasso and knotty issues of our times.

A robot in human guise,
she has no feelings like we do, no designs
on our jobs or our necks—though she states
I enjoy being a person who makes people think.

Ai-Da’s knowledge of Dante’s Divine Comedy
sparked in her these poetic lines:

     We looked up from our verses like blindfolded captives,
     Sent out to seek the light; but it never came,
     A needle and thread would be necessary
     For the completion of the picture.
     To view the poor creatures, who were in misery,
     That of a hawk, eyes sewn shut.

Some, feeling threatened, will rail against
algorithms that might influence our behavior,
subverting human autonomy. Others will engage with
and direct how AI affects words and meaning.

Where shall all this lead? Poor creatures, those
who meet the future with their eyes sewn shut.


Darrell Petska is a retired university editor. His poetry and fiction can be found in 3rd Wednesday Magazine, First Literary Review–East, Nixes Mate Review, Verse Virtual, Loch Raven Review, and elsewhere. A father of five and grandfather of six, he lives near Madison, Wisconsin, with his wife of more than 50 years.

Saturday, December 04, 2021

SURELY NO REVELATION IS AT HAND

by David L Williams




While sitting on the back step all looked fine,
but that rope ladder dangling down the trunk
reminded me how freedom’s in decline,
assaulted by minorities of bunk.

Angered, along these lines, as I sat out,
I shook my head and struggled to make sense
of turncoat madness, but my turn to shout,
madly across the lawn and through the fence

fell short of any Capitol to breach,
and any insurrection I might mount
would hardly climb a ladder with the reach
to trip up emissaries of false doubt.

The challenge, tangled in their ropes of lies:
Unseat them calmly, before freedom dies.


David L Williams is recently retired from 34 years teaching high school English in Lincoln, Nebraska, his primary residence since he went to college there in the 80s. His poetry has mostly been written since May of 2021, and he has only recently started trying to publish. For inspiration, he enjoys sitting on the two steps leading to their patio and looking out back.

Friday, December 03, 2021

CONJOINT

by Imogen Arate




When the waves come
you will remember my name
When the mountains melt
in the blaze of your misdeeds
you’ll beg for another chance
though you squandered them
in your privileged stance

calling your destruction 
into being you sealed every
egress to my escape and
annihilate yourself in turn
Then our gaze will meet again
and you’ll recognize your
anguish in my eyes


Imogen Arate is an award-winning Asian-American poet and writer and the Executive Producer and Host of Poets and Muses (https://poetsandmuses.com), a weekly poetry podcast that won second place at National Federation of Press Women's 2020 Communications Contest. She has written in four languages and published in two. Her works were most recently published on The New Verse News and in Consilience and Rigorous. You can find her @PoetsandMuses on Twitter and Instagram.

Thursday, December 02, 2021

OMICRON

by Joan Mazza


Animation showing the cause of Brownian motion, the random motion of visible particles (white spheres) in a gas or liquid. This random motion is caused by the particles colliding with the molecules or atoms (blue) in the surrounding gas or liquid. These molecules or atoms (shown here) are not visible to the human eye. This is represented by the blue spheres fading out midway through the animation. Credit CHRISTIAN KOCH, MICROCHEMICALS / SCIENCE PHOTO LIBRARY


When I think of these many months of isolation,
nearly two years so far, I well up with gratitude
for this holiday season when I can eat at a table
of sixteen, no masks, no fear of breathing the air.
As I drive home from Thanksgiving, stuffed
full for the first time since I took control of my
gluttony, a new variant of Covid’s in the news,
already flying toward us on planes, inside

vaccinated humans traveling to celebrate or return
home. Invisible and insidious, this not-quite-living
piece of RNA only aims to reproduce itself, not
kill us, although it’s not wanting or thinking
anything, mindless as a living thing could be,
circulating, waiting for the right conditions
to dig in, like a seed in soil after a long winter.

They’re naming the variants with Greek letters,
like the extended list of names for hurricanes.
Soon, they’ll run out. Will they use the names
of stars or planets? Resort to letters and numbers?
This is our long winter. We lock down again,
stay home and write, reread books we loved
to delight in them as if they were new, hope

to germinate and bloom what’s fresh. We have
no idea how deadly these new mutations
will be, how contagious, or if it will surge
and fade without explanation, leave a mystery
until another blooms in the world’s swamp.
This is life: erratic and random as Brownian
motion. Unpredictable, beyond control.


Joan Mazza has worked as a microbiologist and psychotherapist, and taught workshops  on understanding dreams and nightmares. She is the author of six books, including Dreaming Your Real Self, and her poetry has appeared in Rattle, Valparaiso Poetry Review, Prairie Schooner, Poet Lore, and The Nation. She lives in rural central Virginia where she writes every day.