TOP OF MIND

by Tricia Knoll

So you’re doing something about an annoyance,
is that what you’re trying to tell us?

What I’m really sick of is Presidents who lie,
vilify, condemn anyone who doesn’t agree

with his bigoted view of the world. The guy
who says another tax break will fix

the deficit we stagger under. This is the best
you can come up with? When caged children

cry for their mothers and fathers? The red flag
we need to raise is a ban on assault rifles

that have anyone stepping into a public square
looking over their shoulders, afraid.

I am so tired of the daily grind of your party
taking away the rights and liberties of people

you’ve marginalized. I am sick, sick, sick
of the chipping away, stone by stone,

of environmental protections. If I could
call you a million times, ring your line,

and repeat this over and over, I would.
Annoy the hell out of you.


Tricia Knoll hates robocalls as much as anyone else, but there is so much more making us sick at heart and tired of this administration. Knoll's work appears widely in journals and anthologies.

YOU NEED TO CALM DOWN

by Frank De Canio

This video by Taylor Swift won the Video for Good and Video of the Year awards at Monday’s MTV Video Music Awards. In her acceptance speech, Swift commended VMA voters for supporting the video’s message of LGBTQ equality and once again brought attention to her petition for the Equality Act, noting that it now has over 500,000 signatures “which is five times the amount that it would need to warrant a response from the White House,” she said, checking her imaginary watch to indicate she’s still waiting.

Just as a quarry’s brash response
brings to the fore, one laid to waste,
a stance conveying nonchalance
implies its source has been outfaced.
They’re adversaries Taylor Swift
can handle with good-naturedly
aplomb. She doesn’t let them rift
her measured sensibility.
Nor does she blithely shake them off
with just a sisterly rebuke.
For less Patrón than Molotov
cocktail she just as well would duke
it out when trolls step on her gown,
were she not bent on calming down.


Frank De Canio was born & bred in New Jersey, works in New York. He love theater and music of all kinds, from Bach to Amy Winehouse. He hosts a Cafe Philo discussing philosophical issues in lower Manhattan.

NOT ELIZABETH BARRETT BROWNING

by Marilyn Peretti


Click here for more information on how to save the Earth.
          Click here to purchase or stream this video.


How do I not love thee earth?
Let me count the ways:
Monarchs leaving
Bees leaving
Polar bears leaving
Fires in the Arctic
Fires in Amazon forests
Microfiber in ocean fish
Microfiber in Arctic snow
Fossil fuels spitting from cars
Fossil fuels pouring from planes
   that depart every minute from
      somewhere
Lead in the water
Polluted water in Flint
Polluted water in Newark
Asbestos hiding everywhere
No water in Cape Town
Low water in Cairo
Low water in Bangalore
Glaciers melting - drip  drip
Funeral for glacier in Iceland
So, sea level rising along South Carolina
Sea level rising in Miami
Sea level rising in Brazosport
Sea level rising in Little Ferry

Shall I love thee better after death?

Marilyn Peretti from near Chicago, is Pushcart nominated, her poems published in Kyoto Journal, Journal of Modern Poetry, TheNewVerse.News, Rockford Review, Fox Cry Review, Talking River, Li Poetry (Chinese), Grey Sparrow, and others. Her books Let Wings Take You, Lichen-Poems of Nature, Angel's Wings, and To Remember-To Hope, are sold at the Blurb Bookstore.

GHAZAL

by Judith Terzi

Emmett Till (July 25, 1941 - August 28, 1955)

Heather Heyer (May 29, 1985 - August 12, 2017)

Simeon Wright died 2 years ago. A faithful cousin of Emmett Till.
Heather Heyer's also gone. A victim of hatred like Emmett Till.

Two men shot Emmett, 14, sank him with a fan from a cotton gin.
One man killed Heather with another machine. Like Emmett Till.

Simeon, 12, saw the men point the gun, grab the teen from his bed.
His life spent haunted by the abduction of his cousin, Emmett Till.

Heather followed her conscience. She marched to oppose the rage.
A street for her in Charlottesville. In Chicago, one named Emmett Till.

Heather was murdered while crossing her street not too long ago.
Sixty-four years have passed since the murder of Emmett Till.

Judith Terzi is the author of Museum of Rearranged Objects (Kelsay Books, 2018) as well as of five chapbooks including If You Spot Your Brother Floating By and Casbah (Kattywompus Press). Her poetry appears widely in literary journals and anthologies, has received nominations for Best of the Net and Web, and has been read on the BBC. She holds an M.A. in French Literature and is a former educator who taught high school French for many years as well as English at California State University, Los Angeles, and in Algiers, Algeria.

THE FIRE THIS TIME

by George Salamon






We're breaking earth
Like a loaf of bread,
Chasing oceans from
Their bottoms, and
Huffing the frenzy of
Fire into a ball so strong
It will tumble boulders
Into our soft flesh.


Maybe, George Salamon who lives in St. Louis,  MO suggests, there will be some good news at 11.

AMAZON FIRE MONEY

by Kristin Yates






We’re consumed by the beef
we’re broiling
Earth’s lungs
to farm more cattle
we are burning every
minute the size of a football
field to breed, slit

over 40 million
throats

Lungs, logged

$Indigenous persons, the Mura tribe Jaguar Cashapona tree, the Barrigona tree
Pataxó tribe Giant Armadillo, the Parintintin tribe Harpy Eagle Strangler Fig tree

are the change
ranchers gain
but do not count

as if they own the forest

charred, already spent


Kristin Yates hopes more than space can see the price of our consumption. #ActForAmazonia

CALLING CAPTAIN AMERICA!

by Susannah Greenberg

Graphic by @PresVillain who takes real Trump quotes and Photoshops them into existing comics.

“In today’s all too real world, Captain America’s most nefarious villain, the Red Skull, is alive on screen and an Orange Skull haunts America.” 

—Art Spiegelman, The Guardian, August 17, 2019

They co-opt us and adopt us,
steal the words that we say.

They corrupt us, interrupt us,
default and delay.

Mr. Marvel, Mr. Lieber, rolls in his grave,
as Americans all are the Orange Skull's slave.

Lying and trying to borrow our song,
with tongues forked and twisted, it comes out all wrong.

With the Dictators Playbook on his nightstand,
he dreams of a people he can command.

One day we'll awake and when we are woke,
then once again we can call him a joke.

Oh Captain, my Captain, I fear you are dead,
they're taking away our roses and bread.

Captain America, won't you come home,
your people are calling, wherever you roam.

Susannah Greenberg is an independent book publicist at Susannah Greenberg Public Relations.  Since that terrible day in November 2016, she's turned to writing rhymed verse, which is better than drinking she supposes.

ONE DAY

by Peg Quinn

I’ll let your adrenaline rest,
not itemize facts on
how we’ve destroyed Earth's
environmental balance—
though I’m confident
it will survive
without us

I only want to let you know,
in spite of this,
I waited in line at Trader Joe’s
while the clerk recited
a Mary Oliver poem
to a customer
standing,
enchanted.


Peg Quinn is a mural painter and poet who keeps afloat in Santa Barbara, California.

ON THE AMAZON FIRES

by Sister Lou Ella Hickman

As the Amazon burned and the world faced an ecological disaster, President Emmanuel Macron of France bluntly criticized Brazil’s leader this week and threatened to kill a major trade deal between Europe and Brazil. President Trump, on the other hand, posted a tweet only Friday evening, saying that the United States was ready to help contain the fires, but adding that “future trade prospects” between the United States and Brazil “are very exciting.” Photo: Under increasing international pressure to contain fires sweeping parts of the Amazon, President Jair Bolsonaro of Brazil on Friday authorized use of the military to battle the massive blazes. Credit:Leo Correa/Associated Press via The New York Times, August 24, 2019

                                i

                        my arms  scorched
                        with solidarity’s fire
                        ask   is this the world’s misplaced rage  
                                             or
                                                        is there some unknown  unseen  monster
                                             that feeds on our anger, fear, and hate
                                             that spews back flames
                                             to consume the earth's primal green breathing

                                                     ii

                                            the media question blares
                                            what can you do to help
                                            let your skin also burn
                                            with solidarity’s fire


Author’s note: I had a severe psoriasis flareup that began approximately the same time the Amazon fires began.


Sister Lou Ella Hickman, I.W.B.S. is a former teacher and librarian. She is a certified spiritual director as well as a poet and writer.  Her poems have appeared in numerous magazines such as America, First Things, Emmanuel, Third Wednesday, and TheNewVerse.News as well as in the anthologies The Night’s Magician: Poems about the Moon edited by Philip Kolin and Sue Brannnan Walker, Down to the Dark River edited by Philip Kolin, Secrets edited by Sue Brannan Walker, and After Shocks: The Poetry of Recover for Life-Shattering Events edited by Tom Lombardo. She was nominated for the Pushcart Prize in 2017. Her first book of poetry entitled she: robed and wordless was published by Press 53 in 2015.

WAYNE LAPIERRE

by Mark Danowsky

Illustration by Tony Calabro

The world is on fire
so fire back

Fire before fire can be declared

Fire before anyone can shout fire

whether the building is crowded
or otherwise

Shout fire, fire, fire
in the hole
Fore!

Man down
Woman down
Child down

down child down

Who else is left down?

You know who
is cowering in the bathtub
fearful of a stray
bullet in the brain
Wayne saw John
Wayne or The Baptist

Showed him The Way

Fear, Love

the world becomes
a scary place

Wayne at night

his family in harm’s way

he prays for them

prays for us

pray we understand why

why guns save
not shatter
lives of a feather


collapse us with shards

a million little pieces of shrapnel

 Wayne, god
can’t you see

the rest of us shot thru

bleeding out


Mark Danowsky is a poet / writer from Philadelphia and author of the poetry collection As Falls Trees (NightBallet Press, 2018). He’s Managing Editor for the Schuylkill Valley Journal.

YOU DON'T

by Laura Rodley

The roll call of deceased unit members, which included 10 men killed in action, was an emotional time for Vietnam veterans who reunited in Berea, Ohio on August 9, 2019. "Even though we have had some sleepless nights, some dreams we want to forget, the remembrance of PTSD, and Agent Orange that just won't let go, we continue to be grateful and to stand for our flag," said the Chaplain. Photo credit: Beth Mlady/Special to cleveland.com, August 17, 2019

You don’t know him, he doesn’t
ask to be known, he won
a bronze star for valor
in Vietnam, he shops
on senior discount Tuesdays
at Big Y, at least he used to.
He doesn’t go out anymore,
even outside. You wouldn’t
recognize him, he’s just an
average Joe in a linen shirt,
rhythm of helicopters whirring
in his head. The Fourth of July,
Friday night fireworks in Ocean Park?
He’s seen enough fireworks, mortar
shell explosions, lights exploding,
himself exploding, he doesn’t want
any reminders. But ask for recognition,
no, valor of Vietnam vets unspoken,
stationed in Da Nang, ground zero for Agent Orange,
his early heart attack just a fluke
the doctor said, hearing loss due to age.
He slept next to a mortar shell field.
They blew up all the time.
He’s not asking anything
from his country that he served,
just to be left alone.

He only has to be as tall
as the ceiling of his livingroom,
where he chomps Fritos, swallows Cokes,
he doesn’t have to see behind him,
beside him, below him as the chopper
brings him base to base to allocate
and release funds, he doesn’t
have to see through forests, they
were denuded by Agent Orange,
someone could drop down on him
from above, but not while
he’s in front of the T.V. The front
door is locked, a cheap remedy
against machine gun fire.
He only has to manage the space
of the couch, the clicker, even
the screened-in porch reveals
too much green, someone could
be hiding in those maples, oaks,
kudzu, and that’s not paranoia,
it was real for him for two tours,
someone hiding to do him harm,
annihilate him and nothing but
his dog tags to know his name.
He would not call this being afraid,
nor is he: he is aware, hyper-aware
of leave rustle, door closing, pop-top
of the can breaking open, the fizzle
of foam. Everything he does saves
his life and those of the men he
served with- not one of them taught
to act alone but as a unit, always
aware of his buddy, aware of combat
boots squishing in the mud of rice paddies
beside him. Hyper-aware of
everything outside of him to save
them all, but nothing but his finessed reaction
for shooting or readiness to bail out of the chopper
of his own internal life. He
lived outside himself, his body, and
having survived when so many
he knew did not, he brought
it all home with him, where
it breathes in the livingroom
with him, he can’t close his eyes,
it’s inside him now, it won’t get out,
won’t let him go.

Laura Rodley, Pushcart Prize winner is a quintuple Pushcart Prize nominee, and quintuple Best of Net nominee. Publisher Finishing Line Press nominated her Your Left Front Wheel Is Coming Loose for a PEN L.L.Winship Award and Mass Book Award. FLP also nominated her Rappelling Blue Light for a Mass Book Award. Former co-curator of the Collected Poets Series, Rodley teaches the As You Write It memoir class and has edited and published As You Write It, A Franklin County Anthology volumes I-VI, also nominated for a Mass Book Award. She was accepted at Martha’s Vineyard’s NOEPC and has been a participant in the 30 poems in November fundraiser for the Literacy Project of the Center for New Americans. Latest books: Turn Left at Normal by Big Table Publishing and Counter Point by Prolific Press.

AN OKWARD SITUATION

by Julie Steiner

Video published on Aug 19, 2019

Since "jökull" means "ice sheet," not "rock,"
we're re-christening Okjökull "Ok."
By the time we re-brand
balmy Iceland as "Land,"
will we stop calling climate change "schlock"?

Julie Steiner is a pseudonym in San Diego. Besides the TheNewVerse.News, the venues in which her poetry has appeared include the Able Muse Review, Rattle, Light, and the Asses of Parnassus.

BROKEN WINDOWS

by Alan Walowitz

The New York City police officer whose chokehold led to Eric Garner’s death in 2014 was fired from the Police Department and stripped of his pension benefits on Monday, ending a bitter battle that had cast a shadow over the nation’s largest police force. Commissioner James P. O’Neill’s decision to dismiss the officer, Daniel Pantaleo (pictured above in May), came five years after Mr. Garner’s dying words—“I can’t breathe”—helped to galvanize the Black Lives Matter protests that led to changes in policing practices in New York and around the country. Photo: Eduardo Munoz Alvarez/Associated Press via The New York Times, August 19, 2019.

Some more fake news from the great American fable:
a baseball shatters the neighbor’s window
into a bullseye of splinters
as the old guy emerges, face on fire,
newspaper rolled into a cudgel clutched in his paw.
But a pussy cat at heart,
he’ll remember when he was young and will smile.
Or a doughy lady gets launched like a pinball
after too much slow-baking,
and more than a little tippling,
her apron aflutter and rolling pin awag,
but she’ll offer cookies to the kids.

In our tale, the window always heals itself
or gets forgotten in the false fever
of our Mayberry dreams—
We’ll make America great again.
Turns out it never was about the window,
only a way to get our next episode rolling.

If you attend to a broken window
the whole neighborhood’ll get fixed
and America made great again.
Tompkinsville on Staten Island’ll
become Short Hills, Grosse Point, Scarsdale,
or even Lake Success, right near me,
where the cop who pulls you over
doesn’t know from loosies—
what a lustrous word for a dark occupation,
a guy trying to make a buck on the street.

But just the same the cop might be thinking,
I’d like to strangle this guy,
as he writes you up for driving distracted
by that cracked windshield
you haven’t found the time or money to repair.
But he’s friendly enough
for all his formality
about rights and recourse.
See you in court, he says,
sneering in your rearview mirror
as he waves you on.
We’ll make America great again, alright,
Just be sure you’re white and bring plenty of cash.
We don’t take credit cards or checks.


Editor’s Note from Frontline: The 1980s-era theory known as “Broken Windows” . . . argues that maintaining order by policing low-level offenses can prevent more serious crimes. But in cities where Broken Windows has taken root, there’s little evidence that it’s worked as intended. The theory has instead resulted in what critics say is aggressive over-policing of minority communities, which often creates more problems than it solves. Such practices can strain criminal justice systems, burden impoverished people with fines for minor offenses, and fracture the relationship between police and minorities. It can also lead to tragedy: In New York in 2014, Eric Garner died from a police chokehold after officers approached him for selling loose cigarettes on a street corner.


Alan Walowitz has been published various places on the web and off.  His work was nominated for a Pushcart Prize in 2017 and 2018 and he is a Contributing Editor at Verse-Virtual, an Online Community Journal of Poetry.  His chapbook Exactly Like Love is available from Osedax Press, and his full-length book The Story of the Milkman and Other Poems is available from Truth Serum Press. 

THE BIRTH OF AMERICA

by Sally Zakariya

Above is the logo of The 1619 Project, a major initiative from The New York Times observing the 400th anniversary of the beginning of American slavery. The Project aims to reframe the country’s history, understanding 1619 as our true founding, and placing the consequences of slavery and the contributions of black Americans at the very center of the story we tell ourselves about who we are.

Not 1492 when Columbus landed
not 1607 when settlers founded Jamestown
but 1619 when twenty-some Africans
arrived in chains

Port Comfort their landing place
proved no comfort for them

That’s when America began
land of freedom but not for them
land of plenty but not for them
land of everlasting shame
for us but not for them

Twelve million stolen from their homes
two million died on the Middle Passage
half a million sold into slavery here

They cleared the land and built
the plantation houses
they cleaned and cooked and toiled
to make white people rich

They picked cotton for my grandfather
a white-starched-collar lawyer
in Memphis who didn’t have to bend
his back or dirty his hands

They fought for this country
their country and ours
and now … and now …

Four hundred years is time
to admit our history
time to make things right

Sally Zakariya’s poetry has appeared in some 75 print and online journals and been nominated for the Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net. Her most recent publication is The Unknowable Mystery of Other People (Poetry Box, 2019). She is also the author of Personal Astronomy, When You Escape, Insectomania, and Arithmetic and other verses, as well as the editor of the poetry anthology Joys of the Table.