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Submission Guidelines: Send 1-3 unpublished poems in the body of an email (NO ATTACHMENTS) to nvneditor[at]gmail.com.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.
Donald Trump decided to retweet a Benito Mussolini quote originally posted by Twitter bot that Gawker had made several months ago, expressly for the purpose of goading Trump into retweeting a Benito Mussolini quote. In sending out that one little tweet, Donald Trump proved the point we had in mind when we created that bot: to show that Trump’s rhetoric is often indistinguishable from that of history’s most vainglorious and authoritarian fascist dictators—Benito Mussolini, specifically. –Gawker, March 1, 2016
"It is better to live one day as a
lion than one hundred days as a sheep,"
Benito Mussolini railed. Has a
retweet awakened people from their sleep?
What Donald Trump, il Duce, quick observes--
his own reflection, parody revealed
("It is better to reign in hell than serve
in heav'n," from which John Milton's Satan's sealed)--
Is stained in colors of malignant love
of self profound. Releasing greenhouse gas
in every bite of sound, he sends above
such fumes that trap all reason under glass.
Now long from paradise the nation lost,
the world's sheep won't pay the lions' cost.
Lauren Wellman is a writer and editor living in Tijuana, Mexico. Her poetry has been published in The Bitter Oleander, City Works and the San Diego Poetry Annual.
“Donald Trump may have some controversial political views, but as the above video shows, the 69-year-old presidential candidate (and aspiring movie star) has great taste in film — even if some of his cinematic interpretations are a bit unconventional. Long before he was the star of NBC’s The Apprentice or the unlikely leader of the Republican presidential primary, Trump was a mere celebrity billionaire, which gave him time to participate in a mini-documentary project with Oscar-winning documentarian Errol Morris. The Fog of War and The Thin Blue Line director spent five days in 2002 with a litany of celebrities and dignitaries, filming them as they talked about their favorite movies. . . . One interview that didn’t make the final cut was Trump talking about his favorite movie, the 1941 classic Citizen Kane.” —Jordan Zakarin, Yahoo! Movies, Sept. 9, 2015. "The Movie Movie, an aborted project [by filmmaker Errol Morris], is based on the idea of taking Donald Trump, Mikhail Gorbachev and others and putting them in the movies they most admire. Isn't it possible that in an alternative universe Donald Trump actually starred in Citizen Kane?" —Errol Morris: Aborted Projects
Rosebud
Who burned his sled? That would explain
The wisps of hair coiffed like a mane,
The name writ large on thrusting towers,
His rating of his works and powers.
Who wouldn’t take up his refrain?
A loser, say, without a brain
And envious he can’t obtain
Fresh wives imported like cut flowers.
(Who burned his sled?)
A nation may endure a reign
Of fire once tended with some pain
Outlasting its appointed hours
Yet starved, for all that it devours.
The question holds fast like a stain—
Who burned his sled?
J.D. Smith’s third collection of poems Labor Day at Venice Beach was published in 2012; his first humor collection Notes of a Tourist on Planet Earth the following year.. His poems have appeared in journals and sites including 99 Poems for the 99 Percent, Nimrod, Tar River Poetry, Texas Review, and Dark Mountain 3.
"Jane Mayer’s Dark Money—a detailed accounting of rise and rise [of the Koch Brothers]—is absolutely necessary reading for anyone who wants to make sense of our politics. Lay aside the endless punditry about Donald’s belligerence or Hillary’s ambition; Mayer is telling the epic story of America in our time. It is a triumph of investigative reporting, perhaps not surprising for a journalist who has won most of the awards her profession has to offer. But she had to cut through the secrecy that these men have carefully cultivated, unraveling an endless list of front groups. And she had to do it despite real intimidation; apparently an arm of what some have called 'the Kochtopus' hired private investigators to try to dig up dirt on her personal and professional life, a tactic that failed because there wasn’t any. She’s a pro, and she’s given the world a full accounting of what had been a shadowy and largely unseen force." —Bill McKibben, The New York Review of Books, March 10, 2016 issue. Image source: DonkeyHotey
not exactly Heaven but
the billionaire’s equivalent
as they answer the prayers
of a certain kind of Koch-loving
politician such as runs the
state of Wisconsin or represents
Texas in the U. S. Senate
although both have been dumped
as too low in the polls when
there is still the Cuban kid
with the fresh face and the
fresh tongue hydrated often
taking unlimited largess from
the family fortune that has
its foundation in partnership
connections with Adolph Hitler
and the Nazi Political Party
without worry because it
was after all a good business
deal and all that counts is the
bottom line and why do some
people talk of morality in
the context of industrial success
and the accumulation of profits
to use in self-glorification and
many mansions yachts and personal
jets even if the innocents are dying
in death camps dividends are all
important for the trinity to
some consists of two brothers
and the holy ghost of profit
also known as dark money
Howard Winn’s fiction and poetry, has been published recently by such journals as Dalhousie Review, Taj Mahal Review (India), Galway Review (Ireland), Antigonish Review, Literature Today, The Long Story, Pennsylvania Literary Review, Blueline, Chaffin Review, Thin Air Literary Journal, and TheNewVerse.News. His B. A. is from Vassar College. His M.A. is from the Stanford University Writing Program. His doctoral work was done at N.Y.U. He has been a social worker in California and currently is a faculty member of SUNY-Dutchess as Professor of English.
“Mr. Trump’s popularity — his support in some polls is double that of his closest competitors — is built on his unfettered style, rather than on his positions, which have proved highly fungible.” —Trip Gabriel, NY Times, Aug. 5, 2015. Image Source: Angie's Diary
Maryanne Hannan has published poetry in Rattle, Light Quarterly, WomenArts Quarterly, and Minnesota Review. A former Latin teacher, she lives in upstate New York.
Three people have died in a series of shootings at three sites near Hesston, Kansas, including a lawn care products factory, authorities said Thursday night. Photo: Fernando Salazar, AP via USA Today, Feb. 25, 2016
When the dogs attack
your dog,
in the new park, you spend the whole time
wondering
if you are wrong, if somehow you
misunderstood.
The light is beautiful
that night:
a hollowed shell.
No one thinks of how the thing
that lives inside
gets boiled alive.
Buried.
Frozen. There
are manuals, online.
You start
shaking
when you see how the dogs’ mouths
are full of blood, you
started screaming
at some point, oh, no, my god, although you don’t
believe in gods.
Thursday night, another man
shot everyone
like it was in
another language where this thing
just sometimes happens.
People tried
to explain:
the soft
warm evening, what he ate, the curling
screams
like lobsters boiling,
bumping dully
in the pot.
Elizabeth McMunn-Tetangco lives in California's Central Valley, where she works as a librarian. Her chapbook Various Lies is forthcoming from Finishing Line Press.
“I have a great relationship with the blacks.”—Donald J. Trump
Rather, I will reboot this poem about the blacks
with a quote from Virginia Woolf: For she was a child, throwing bread to the ducks, between her parents who stood by the lake, holding her life in her arms which, as she neared them, grew larger and larger in her arms, until it became a whole life, a complete life, which she put down by them and said, "This is what I have made of it! This!" And what had she made of it? What, indeed?
And thinking of the blacks, their mattering
lives, I look at my whole white life, my bookshelf.
See? There’s Audre Lorde and Harriett Jacobs
and Kevin Young and Yusef Komunyakaa and Richard
Wright and Ralph Ellison, all their February words!
And I look at my white, complete life, and say,
“I have done nothing wrong.”
In Florida, the best hanging tree is the live oak,
with its big low-limbed girth. At the Lee County
Courthouse a live oak has been made into a chainsaw
sculpture of an American bald eagle in flight. On my commute
to school, with my black president and my black
boss man, I go along Michigan Avenue,
right through the black heart of Dunbar. My neighbor
is anxious. Someone has given the Asian food
delivery guy the building’s passcode. He’s
probably on probation. Our Sheriff shaves
his head, wears his green uniform, says how
we are not willing to face our problems.
He says I should have a registered gun in my glove
compartment. I should keep a gun in my desk
drawer, packing heat in my classroom. The evangelist
at my university shouts through his bullhorn
how my students are going to hell, all of them
texting their next booty call. I think how language
is dripping in the blackness. It’s like that tar baby.
Elvis’s hips, Beyoncè’s X, are they not black, too?
When I think black I think cinder black. Or my
one black kiss—Jesus, she was a cheerleader at Idaho
State, straight out of Pocatello—which was for me
for being sweet. I am a nice guy. I like
Kendrick Lamar. I like his pyrotechnics. When I think black
I think the earth cindered, all that burning,
my life cindered, desiccated, to the whitest, white ash.
James Brock has published four books of poetry, and he is currently writing plays for Ghostbird Theatre Company in Fort Myers, Florida. He also teaches writing and literature at Florida Gulf Coast University.
yet all this starving refugee can do
is drag his tired feet on the ground
and watch the shadows
of a flock of flying birds
while fiercely swallowing
his dry saliva
William Marr has published 23 volumes of poetry (3 in English and the rest in his native Chinese language), 3 books of essays and several books of translations. His most recent book, Chicago Serenade, a trilingual (Chinese/English/French) poetry anthology, was published in Paris in 2015. His poetry has been translated into more than ten languages and included in over one hundred anthologies. Some of his poems are used in high school and college textbooks in Taiwan, China, England, and Germany. He is a former president of the Illinois State Poetry Society and has received numerous awards, including three from Taiwan for his poetry and translations. A PhD recipient and a retired research engineer, he now resides in a Chicago suburb.
I came to buy just milk and whole grain bread.
The chips, the dips, free samples make me sick.
No chocolate kale for me until I'm dead--
Was that a voice in Health Aids I heard click?
"Have you tried ever in your life a 'cleanse'?" Please, take me out of here, just let me pay.
It's more than my shy colon she offends--
Oh, no! Now Check-Out Guy cites the Debates.
I don't care what you think about Herr Trump,
won't listen to your "done is Hillary."
It's mum I'll be, on my own log, a bump.
But do tell Ted my bread is gluten-free.
Now hurry, bag my stuff. I'm in a rush!
"At least Mark Rubio is nice," you gush.
Patty Mosco Holloway is a writing teacher. She lives in Denver, Colorado. She often "hears" the starts of poems in conversations. Advice: Don't talk to her.
no meaning, only the terrible coincidence of living
your life as if it was yours to keep instead of
target practice for some killer. Kalamazoo is so
small, I know someone who knows him. I want to
drive by my dealership. I don’t know why. Instead
I head downtown to retrieve a lost umbrella. No
easy smiles on the street. The sky, if it’s not already
crying, will be soon.
A retired professor of English at Kellogg Community College in Battle Creek, Elizabeth Kerlikowske served 25 years as president of Friends of Poetry in Kalamazoo.
“Let's make sure I read this correctly: Cliven Bundy requested a federal public defender from the big, bad government? You've got to be kidding me! For 20-plus years, Bundy has shamelessly been grazing his cattle on the taxpayers' dime, and now that he's in cuffs, he'll take more government/taxpayer help? My only comment: Please call me for jury duty!” —Bill Taylor, Letter to the Editor of OregonLive.com, Feb. 21, 2016; Photo via OregonLive.com: The Multnomah County Sheriff's Office released the mugshot from Cliven Bundy's arrest.
When the elders
of the Burns Paiute nation
included in the 1868 treaty
by which they
ceded tribal lands
around Malheur Lake
a provision guaranteeing
"protection against bad men,"
it would be pleasing
to imagine they foresaw
the occupation of Malheur
by Ammon Bundy
and the Oregon Militia
158 years later.
When Bundy and Company,
strutting and fretting
on YouTube,
declared themselves
advocates of the public's right
to free use of the public lands,
it would be pleasing
to imagine they meant
something beside the right
to burn where you like,
to graze where you like,
to ride your four-wheeler
wherever you like,
and to bury your shit,
as the Militia at Malheur did,
at an ancient Paiute
cultural site.
Isaac Mason is the name assumed by a person working under false credentials at a major Chicago law firm. He lives with many cartons of books in a neighborhood where you would not feel comfortable. His work has appeared or is forthcoming in Duende, Steel Toe Review, Polychrome Ink, and elsewhere.
Boil seven brown eggs in water
Turn off the kitchen light as the day begins
See the sparrows perched, earrings, on winter trees
Miss you—all of you—always
See the banner headlines and hope still
Know that we are here now
Forget not what makes us happy
Pee clear with no pain
Love you forever, even when I'm gone.
Sarah Stern is the author of But Today Is Different (Wipf and Stock, 2014) and Another Word for Love (Finishing Line Press, 2011). Her poems have appeared in numerous publications, recently in The American Dream, The Man Who Ate His Book: The Best of Ducts.org, Epiphany, Freefall, and Verse Daily. She is a four-time winner of the Bronx Council on the Arts' Poetry Award. She graduated from Barnard College and Columbia University’s Graduate School of Journalism. She is the Acting Director of Communications at the EastWest Institute and lives in New York City.
All, all alike endear'd, grown, ungrown, young or old,
Strong, ample, fair, enduring, capable, rich,
Perennial with the Earth, with Freedom, Law and Love . . .
Embedded into this video is a 36-second wax cylinder recording of what is thought to be Whitman's voice reading four lines from the poem "America:” Recording: Copyright Eric Forsythe, 2012–2013. Made available on the Whitman Archive with permission of the rights holder. Audio may be reused for non-commercial purposes, with credit to Eric Forsythe and the Walt Whitman Archive. For more information on this recording, see Ed Folsom, "The Whitman Recording," Walt Whitman Quarterly Review, 9 (Spring 1992), 214-16.
I.
I see you, Walt Whitman---an American
Rough, a Cosmos! I see you face to face!
I see you and the nameless faceless
Faces in America's timeless crowds of men
and women who you saw in your mind's eye.
I see you crossing the river on your ferry.
I see you walking down the public road
Where everyone is worthy. Neither time,
Place nor distance separates.
II.
You once saw the currents of corruption,
Fast flowing into the land that you loved.
You once saw that which had departed
With the setting sun, half an hour high,
For when another is degraded,
so are you and I.
You once saw what had flowed in with the
Rising flood-tides feverishly pouring---
Tides saturated and soaked with exploitation,
Bribery, falsehood and maladministration.
III.
When you saw the motionless wings of
Twelfth-month sea-gulls, When you walked
Along Manhattan Island---When you watched the
Ships of Manhattan, north and west---
Could you see Wall Street banks
Seizing the homes of your beloved countrymen,
Voyaging in their fragile ferryboats? The carpenters,
Quakers, scientists and opium eaters; The immigrants,
Squaws, boatmen and blacksmiths; The farmers,
Mechanics, sailors and priests?
IV.
Could you see the monstrous megaton corporations
Feasting on America's flesh blood bones, those
Nameless faceless parasites
Sucking the soul from your loved land,
Like a malevolent disease?
V.
For you saw quite clearly the political and
Economic malfunctioning mutant ties that connect us.
Neither time, place nor distance separates.
And you saw very clearly the sickly green sludge
Secreted by lobbyists to their bought and sold
Henchmen soldier baby-kissers, to slow and
Stop the flow of nourishing rushing sea tides
Into your dear, revered democracy.
VI.
You saw the evil dark patches---the clinging selfish
Steadfast pernicious grasp of the flourishing one
Per cent oligarchs, Who lusted, grubbed, lied, stole--
Were greedy, shallow, sly, angry, vain, cowardly,
malignant--Seeking only to hold onto their fool's
Gold and preserve the status quo.
VII.
Each still furnishes its part towards the death of
America's democracy. Each still furnishes its part
Towards destroying her soul. The mocking bird
Still sings the musical shuttle to the tearful
Bareheaded child, and the final word superior for
America may still be her death, death, death,
Death. The sea has whisper'd me, too.
Gil Hoy is a Boston trial lawyer who is currently studying poetry at Boston University, through its Evergreen program, where he previously received a BA in Philosophy and Political Science. Hoy received an MA in Government from Georgetown University and a JD from the University of Virginia School of Law. He served as a Brookline, Massachusetts Selectman for four terms. Hoy started writing poetry two years ago. Since then, his work has appeared in Third Wednesday, The Write Room, The Eclectic Muse, Clark Street Review, TheNewVerse.News, Harbinger Asylum, Soul Fountain, The Story Teller Magazine, Eye on Life Magazine, Stepping Stones Magazine, The Penmen Review, To Hold A Moment Still, Harbinger Asylum’s 2014 Holidays Anthology, The Zodiac Review, Earl of Plaid Literary Journal, The Potomac, Antarctica Journal, The Montucky Review and elsewhere.
