HOURS OF LEAD

by Susan Gubernat

                                                            This is the Hour of Lead –

                                                            Remembered, if outlived… Emily Dickinson

Lead that grazes the mouth of a child, bloodies her.

Lead she drinks down from her little cup of water.

Lead spewed at one another instead of spit

(though the spit too finds its target).

Lead they load, reload, load, reload

Lead soaring like an earthbound bird emboldened

by flight. Lead sinking to the bottom of a pan

boiling away on a kitchen fire. But can

a mother ever make the bath safe again?

As lead rains hard, can she throw her body in 

the path of the boy being eyed by lead,

stalked by lead, prey to the beast of lead?

The lead in the man’s pockets weighs him 

down like coins he thinks he must spend

to grow lighter. He pans the river for lead,

curses crowds with his shower of lead.

Underground, the dark pipes groan with lead.

Above, the air clamps shut with a seam of lead.

O lead, where is thy sting? There

and there and there.            Here. 

Susan Gubernat’s latest book The Zoo at Night won the Prairie Schooner Book Award from the University of Nebraska Press. Her work has appeared in many publications. She lives and works in the SF Bay Area.

HAIBUN IN ANOTHER FIRE SEASON

by Andrena Zawinski

The smell of ash wakes me in my bed, burning

my nostrils and throat, midnight, as I dream

of water webbed lashes and a cool, damp face.

Diablo winds sling fiery plumes all night across

grapevines, redwoods, schoolhouses, ranches,

livestock and wildlife left behind, everything

trying to catch its breath.

In the gloom of gray hours before down, I write

these words without paper or pen a half wake state,

while winds whistle and howl across the dock,

through trees, into my open window and this poem

                                    stumbling ahead

                                    as this dawn struggles for breath

                                    tears blurring the eyes.

Andrena Zawinski’s poetry has received accolades for lyricism, form, spirituality, and social concern. Her latest book is Landings; others are Something About (a PEN Oakland Award) and Traveling in Reflected Light (a Kenneth Patchen Prize). She founded and runs the San Francisco Bay Area Women’s Poetry Salon and is Features Editor at PoetryMagazine.com. Her poem, “Twilit Sonnet” appeared previously in TheNewVerse.News.

DARK OF THE MOON, HEAT OF THE SUN

by Pepper Trail

“One hundred percent girls,” whispered the biologist, crawling next to the pregnant reptile. “This nest will be 100 percent girls.” As the earth gets hotter, turtle hatchlings worldwide are expected to skew dangerously female, scientists predict, making the animals an unwitting gauge for the warming climate. —The Washington Post, October 22, 2019. Photo: A marine biologist helps a newborn sea turtle reach the sea on Cape Verde’s Boa Vista island. Credit: Danielle Paquette via The Washington Post.

In the dark sea, a greater darkness
An absence of starlight, moving
Then on the wet sand, a stone

Stone into turtle, with gathering of breath
And the climb begins, pull and drag
Against all the weight of earth

Far up the beach, with pause for gasp
The turtle curves wings
Into mittened hands, and digs

For this warmth of nest, the ocean shed
This gush of eggs into the place prepared
Hidden among the grains of sand

Then the lurch, the thrash
The torn-up ground, last concealment
Before the run toward home

At the first break of wave
She lifts head, trailing earthly tears
Rests, breathes full, and flies free

So it has been, the mothers forever
Returning to their mothers’ beach
The fathers waiting in the fathers’ surf

But now, the warmth too warm
The nests send only girls into the sea
Until fathers can be found no more

For long barren years, turtles will swim
Far from the beckoning useless land
Bearing eggs for no generation, the last


Pepper Trail is a poet and naturalist based in Ashland, Oregon. His poetry has appeared in Rattle, Atlanta Review, Spillway, Kyoto Journal, Cascadia Review, and other publications, and has been nominated for Pushcart and Best of the Net awards. His collection Cascade-Siskiyou was a finalist for the 2016 Oregon Book Award in Poetry.

THIS IS HOW WE DO WHAT WE DO NOW

by Alan Catlin

A dead dolphin was found washed ashore in Westerly RI, Oct. 27, 2019. Photo: Zac Perrin, Channel 10 Providence.

Kill things
                 Dolphins
                 Seals
                 Birds
                 Endangered species
                 Separated from parents children
                 Allies

Then we send troops into the country
we betrayed to defend the oil fields


Author’s note: Written after finding a full grown dolphin washed ashore on an offshore island


Alan Catlin has published dozens of chapbooks and full-length books, most recently the chapbook Three Farmers on the Way to a Dance (Presa Press), a series of ekphrastic poems responding to the work of German photographer August Sander who did portraits of Germans before, during, and after both World Wars.

EXAM

by Mark Ward

This week Ugandan police arrested 16 LGBTQ activists on charges of gay sex—which is punishable by life imprisonment. Police arrested them at the sexual health organization where they worked and lived and cited condoms, lubricants and anti-HIV medicines found there as evidence of a crime. Police then subjected them to forced anal exams, which can amount to torture under international law, before releasing them on bail, according to a statement by activists. —The Washington Post, October 26, 2019. Photo: A Ugandan man with a sticker on his face takes part in gay pride in Entebbe, Uganda in 2014. (ISAAC KASAMANI/AFP/Getty Images via The Washington Post)

I feel his fingers pull me apart. 
I am on all fours on a steel trolley
somewhere underground in town. 
All I can see is feet passing. 
                       I clench. He smacks my arse
and for a moment, I am at home
with you—this easy intimacy 
before bed. 
                        Fingers always hurt. 
The nails. Even through gloves. 
That illusion of hygiene. 
                                               He opens me
to peer inside. 
                                He rummages, 
searching for sedition, 
or semen. Something to prove
I walk around with sinful innards.  
                I make no sound. 
                                                  And when he is done, 
despite telling me I can dress, I remain, 
                  trousers round my ankles, 
without shame, fully aware of my 
unprovable proficiencies
                                                  until he leaves in disgust.

Mark Ward is the author of the chapbooks Circumference (Finishing Line Press, 2018) and Carcass (Seven Kitchens Press, 2020), and the full-length collection Nightlight (Salmon Poetry, 2022). His work has been widely published at home and abroad. He is the founding editor of Impossible Archetype, an international journal of LGBTQ+ poetry. 

NEWS HOUR IN DUFUR, OREGON

Original photo by Lynn Ketchum for Oregon State University: Flowering rabbit brush brightens Oregon’s rangelands and provides sustenance to a great golden digger wasp.

Penelope Scambly Schott is a past recipient of the Oregon Book Award for Poetry. Recent books are House of the Cardamon Seed and November Quilt. Dufur is a small (pop: 623) wheat-growing town in north-central Oregon.

REQUIEM FOR ELIJAH

by Shelly Blankman




How do you say goodbye? Always a brew
of duty and love, a fusion of friendship and
family. Stir in politics and the recipe can
kill the comfort of mourners united in grief.

This country said goodbye to a statesman
and grieved in prayer and song, in speeches
and memories by colleagues, family, friends,
religious and political leaders. Those who knew

him and those who did not. Thousands filled
the church and lined the streets to honor a
man loved by the people he served, reviled
by a government he angered with his staunch

defense of human rights and lifetime lessons
of common sense. Absence of a president
unnoticed in the presence of a humble hero.
Elijah Cummings, a Baltimore native, would

certainly have sunk into the annals of history, if
not for raising the spirits of those mired in chaos
and despair. A sharecropper’s son who lived what
he’d learned and left the legacy of a legend.


Originally from Baltimore, Maryland, Shelly Blankman now lives in Columbia, Maryland with her husband, three cat rescues and a foster dog. Her poetry has appeared in First Literary Review-East, The Ekphrastic Review, Halfway Down the Stairs, and other publications

SYCAMORE, SYCAMORE

by Sally Zakariya

“Today we published the results of this quantum supremacy experiment in the Nature article, ‘Quantum Supremacy Using a Programmable Superconducting Processor.’ We developed a new 54-qubit processor, named ‘Sycamore,’ that is comprised of fast, high-fidelity quantum logic gates, in order to perform the benchmark testing. Our machine performed the target computation in 200 seconds, and from measurements in our experiment we determined that it would take the world’s fastest supercomputer 10,000 years to produce a similar output.” —Posted on October 23, 2019 to the Google AI Blog by John Martinis, Chief Scientist Quantum Hardware and Sergio Boixo, Chief Scientist Quantum Computing Theory, Google AI Quantum. Photograph of the Sycamore processor by Erik Lucero, Research Scientist and Lead Production Quantum Hardware.

Hello world, things are changing.
What I knew only as a shag-bark tree—
Sycamore—now names computing
power beyond imagining, now quantum,
supreme, superlative, incomparable.

A dance of particles, tangling, entangled.
To Einstein, “spooky action at a distance.”
To me, complex mystery of mysteries,
wonder of intelligent wonders.

How can I comprehend such power
and speed, such limitless possibilities?
Like us prone to error, but unlike us
capable of brilliance beyond measure.

A human attempt to emulate creation?
Perhaps. Or is it proof how far our
mortal minds can reach?


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 Muslim Wife (Blue Lyra Press, 2019). She is also the author of The Unknowable Mystery of Other People, Personal Astronomy, When You Escape, Insectomania, and Arithmetic and other verses, as well as the editor of a poetry anthology, Joys of the Table.

IN LINE OF THE DECLARATION

by David Stone

Pelosi stands
eclipsing Washington’s bust.
Pelosi stands
across from the men’s folded hands.
Her arm in point to T***p is thrust.
Her calm above his scowl is just.
Pelosi stands.

David Stone teaches English in Loma Linda, CA.  His poetry has appeared in Identity Theory, Shuf, and Inlandia: A Literary Journey as well as in Orangelandia: The Literature of Inland Citrus.  He contributes literary columns for the Southern California News Group.

BLEEDING HEARTS DON'T LIVE HERE ANYMORE

by George Salamon

"I have always been struck, in America, by an emotional poverty so bottomless, and a fear of human life, of human touch, so deep, that virtually no American appears able to achieve any viable organic connection between his public stance and his private life." 

—James Baldwin in I Am Not Your Negro (2017)

It is not a lesson
Easily learned.
After absorbing it,
One comes to
Rely on smaller
Emotions, just to
Be on the safe side.

George Salamon, retired from college teaching, journalism and public affairs, has contributed most recently to The Asses of Parnassus, Dissident Voice, One Sentence Poems and TheNewVerse.News from St. Louis, MO.

VANDALISM AT A MILITARY CEMETERY

by Janice D. Soderling

Dozens of Commonwealth graves have been daubed with swastikas and other symbols at a cemetery dedicated to those fought in the first and second world wars. The headstones were vandalised with red spray paint overnight at the Haifa war cemetery in northern Israel, according to the Commonwealth War Graves Commission (CWGC). It comes just days after several other Commonwealth graves were knocked over at Belfast City Cemetery in Northern Ireland. —The London Economic, October 11, 2019

Indifferent to the clangor at their tent,
the dusty lads sleep on.
Allied in unilateral descent,
indifferent to the clangor at their tent,
and to the tiffs of kings or president.
Unmindful of thick darkness and bright dawn,
indifferent to the clangor at their tent
the dusty lads sleep on.

Janice D. Soderling, poet, writer and translator, is a previous contributor to TheNewVerse.News. Her work in Spanish translation was recent at La libélula vaga and her own translations from Swedish to English are forthcoming at Better than Starbucks.

LATE NIGHT IN A SMOKY BAR AN OLD SWASTIKA DRINKS WHISKEY WITH THE GODDESS ISIS

by Kit Loney

You say a terrorist stole your name? I hear you, sister. Back in the day I was easy in my skin, passed among the creatures of the earth like a fine breeze. I was whirling dervish. Pelican diving. Windmill. Showed travelers the way to Buddhist temples. Would appear on kimono sleeves in sky-blue silk brocade to gather good fortune. Faced left in Sanskrit to juggle dots and dance on pointed toes. Man, those were the days. The Navajo would invite me to kneel on woven carpets for sacred healing chants. I was earth, air, fire, and water. north, west, south, and east. Then one day I’m grabbed from behind, knocked out cold. In fog of fever dreams I’m something small and lethal, like a pistol, dread burning up red from the tail of my spine. Wake up decades later. Splitting headache. Hands covered in blood. These days the Japanese kids call me Mangi, some hashtag to hip as if that Hitler nightmare never happened. But sister, I‘m still covered in scars, still shaking. Oh God! What have I done? And this new tide of angry men with their hands clenching my every arm. No ocean on earth is deep enough. Sister, help me, please!

Kit Loney comes to poetry from a career in visual arts. Her poems have appeared in Prime Number Magazine, The Ekphrastic Review, Fall Lines, Emrys Journal, Kakalak, Yemassee, Qarrtsiluni, Waccamaw, One, and Poetry East. In 2012 she received the Carrie McCray Nickens Poetry Fellowship from the SC Academy of Authors.

FALL IS BEAUTIFUL

by Katherine West

Holly turning red
all along the winding trail,
little flames of fall
amongst the wildflowers—
silver hair of the forest

She is dying, dry
before rain, dry after rain
her children all dead
before they are born, before
the holly can burn, it burns

Eighty years to die—
eighty years for the river
eighty years for me
amongst the wildflowers—
silver hair of the river

She is dying, dry
before rain, dry after rain
her children all dead
before they are born, before
the trout can spawn, they are gone

Fall is beautiful
leaves now turning red as blood
all my long, long life
I was a leaf on your tree
but now we fall together

Katherine West is the author of three poetry collections—The Bone Train, Scimitar Dreams, and Riddle–and has had poetry published in such journals as Bombay Gin, Lalitamba, TheNewVerse.News, La Petite Zine among others.  She lives and teaches poetry workshops about wilderness writing near Silver City, New Mexico.  

EXHUMATION OF RELICS, 2008

by Julie Steiner

“I wish, with all my heart, to be buried in Father Ambrose St John's grave—and I give this as my last, my imperative will.” —Saint John Henry Newman, 1801-1890, canonized on 13 October 2019; the quotation is from “Written in Prospect of Death,”  Meditations and Devotions, Part 3, 1876). See also "“The Empty Tomb: Cardinal Newman's last laugh?” in Commonweal, October 8, 2008.  Photo: Ambrose St John (left) and Saint John Henry Newman.

A miracle, of sorts: an empty tomb—
a skeleton-less grave, though shared by two.
One hundred eighteen years should be too few
for bones and teeth to seep away like rheum.

The undertakers managed to exhume
two coffin handles; damp had rotted through
all else except a gold-thread tassel. Who
could tell which soggy humus went with whom?

Could Church officials separate the clay
of John from that of Ambrose? In a way,
the two became one flesh while six feet under.

Saint John’s been moved; St John stayed put, they say.
And yet the pair defiantly obey
“What God has joined, let no man put asunder.”


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.