A gardener who trimmed a 10ft hedge into a hand flipping the middle finger has been warned he faces police action if he doesn’t chop it down. —The Independent (UK), October 19, 2021 |
Today's News . . . Today's Poem
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Submission Guidelines: Send 1-3 unpublished poems in the body of an email (NO ATTACHMENTS) to nvneditor[at]gmail.com.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.
Wednesday, November 03, 2021
THE BIRD IN A BUSH
Tuesday, November 02, 2021
ANGEL
Jasper Johns: Mind/Mirror at the Whitney Museum of American Art, Sept 29, 2021–Feb 13, 2022. Above: Jasper Johns, Three Flags, 1958. Encaustic on canvas (three panels), 30 7/8 × 45 3/4 in. (78.4 × 116.2 cm) overall. Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; purchase, with funds from the Gilman Foundation, Inc., The Lauder Foundation, A. Alfred Taubman, Laura-Lee Whittier Woods, Howard Lipman, and Ed Downe in honor of the Museum’s 50th Anniversary 80.32. © 2021 Jasper Johns / Licensed by VAGA at Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York |
Monday, November 01, 2021
PANDEMIC ON MY MIND
Sunday, October 31, 2021
THIRST
Via The Daily Caller |
Saturday, October 30, 2021
DUPLEX: INHERITANCE
Studies in roundworms by biologists at the University of Iowa suggest that a mother’s response to stress can influence her children and her grandchildren, through heritable epigenetic changes. Their research, reported in Molecular Cell, demonstrated that roundworm mothers subjected to heat stress passed—under certain conditions—the legacy of that stress exposure not only to their offspring but, if the period of stress to which the mother was exposed was long enough, even to their offspring’s children. —Genetic Engineering & Biotechnology News, October 14, 2021 |
Friday, October 29, 2021
COUNTING BONES
Eddie Canales, director of South Texas Human Rights Center. Photograph: Gabriela Campos via The Guardian. |
Thursday, October 28, 2021
LIPSTICK
Col. Wang Yaping is a pilot in the People’s Liberation Army’s Air Force. She is a space veteran, now making her second trip into orbit. She is set in the coming weeks to be the first Chinese woman to walk in space as China’s space station glides around Earth at 17,100 miles per hour. And yet, as she began a six-month mission last week at the core of China’s ambitious space program, official and news media attention fixated as much on the comparative physiology of men and women, menstruation cycles, and the 5-year-old daughter she has left behind, as they did on her accomplishments. (No one asked about the children of her two male colleagues.) Shortly before the launch, Pang Zhihao, an official with the China National Space Administration, let it be known that a cargo capsule had supplied the orbiting space station with sanitary napkins and cosmetics. “Female astronauts may be in better condition after putting on makeup,” he said in remarks shown on CCTV, the state television network. Photo: Col. Wang Yaping, center, with Col. Ye Guangfu, left, and Maj. Gen. Zhai Zhigang at a pre-launch ceremony on Oct. 15 at the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center in China. Credit: Kevin Frayer/Getty Images —The New York Times, October 23, 2021 |
Wednesday, October 27, 2021
ANTHROPOCENE ANXIETY
Illustration from The Guardian, October 23, 2021 |
Tuesday, October 26, 2021
TOUGH LOVE
by Katie Kemple
Illustration by Chelsea Charles for The Washington Post |
Product of flesh, moldable
robot, we blank out
your name, hide your limbs
in a cross, until your head
can’t hold itself up anymore.
You fucked-up. That’s why
we come for you at 3am,
tell you to get dressed,
handcuff your spoiled wrists,
escort you to our car.
Your parents watch.
They hired us. In America,
our tax dollars fund it.
Through the rear-view
mirror, I see you trying
to memorize the route.
Don’t bother. The place
we’re going, you won’t
get out. We strip you naked,
yell: “cough!” You do it.
We probe the secrets
of your body. No drugs
in your cavities. Prepare to rot,
bitch. Now get going,
I say: “git!” Your walls
are concrete. The women
have pressed the white sheets
of the last girl. The one
who turned herself into
a scarecrow. Yours now,
sleep. Rest your eyelid
on the stain of her
slutty-blue mascara.
Author's Note: This poem is in response to Rachel Aviv’s New Yorker article “The Shadow Penal System For Struggling Kids” (October 18) and Paris Hilton’s Washington Post op-ed “America’s ‘troubled teen industry’ needs reform so kids can avoid the abuse I endured” (October 18). Both articles detail toxic, cult-like organizations that trap unsuspecting youth into a shadow penal system. Once surrendered by their parents, it’s nearly impossible for victims to escape. These companies come for children at night, subject them to strip searches, and inflict psychologically damaging treatments under the guise of "tough love". There are no laws to protect minors in the custody of these groups. In fact, they receive state and federal funds for their services.
Katie Kemple (she/her) is a poet, parent, and consultant in San Diego, CA. Her poems have appeared, or are forthcoming, in Atlanta Review, Longleaf Review, Matter, Lunch Ticket (Amuse-Bouche), and Anti-Heroin Chic.
Monday, October 25, 2021
LIZZO
Sunday, October 24, 2021
THOSE THE EARTH TAKES IN SECRET
Outdoorsy. Beautiful. Outspoken for justice. Full of humor. “Being outdoors and enjoying nature gave her that feeling of empowerment of being free,” a line from her obituary read. The 23-year-old woman was reported missing by her family after she failed to return home. Weeks later, her remains were discovered in a field in Wyoming. This wasn’t Gabrielle Petito, who disappeared a month ago and has over 20 million search results associated with her name on Google. The 23 year old was Jade Wagon, a member of the Northern Arapaho Tribe who went missing from her home on the Wind River Reservation in January 2020. Her death was ruled accidental due to hypothermia and drug intoxication, but her mother, Nicole Wagon, believes that her daughter was a victim of violence. Jade Wagon has 3,610 search results mentioning her name on Google. While developments on Petito’s case have made national news and retained engagement for weeks running, her story is one of tens of thousands of Americans that experience interpersonal violence every year. For many like the Wagons, the tide of activism in Petito’s case reaffirmed what was missing for women of color in similar circumstances. The vast majority do not receive widespread media coverage, let alone sizable social media investigation. Feminist journalist Gwen Ifill originally coined the term “missing white woman syndrome” in 2004, highlighting media’s tendency to favor sensationalized coverage toward white female victims of violence whilst neglecting stories of women of color, who face violence at a disproportionately higher rate, according to the Oregon Coalition Against Domestic and Sexual Violence. —Kyran Berlin, Golden Gate Express, October 15, 2021 |
Saturday, October 23, 2021
SQUATTER
Friday, October 22, 2021
ETHIOPIAN DÉJÀ VU
Despite mass starvation occurring in Ethiopia's northern region of Tigray, senior international aid officials are tiptoeing around declaring a famine nearly a year after the civil war erupted. Photo: This is one of the malnourished children being treated at Ayder Hospital this week —BBC, October 16, 2021 |
Thursday, October 21, 2021
WHAT IT TAKES TO LIVE HERE
Gunmen have killed at least 30 people in northwest Nigeria in the latest round of violence in which hundreds have been killed so far this year and thousands more displaced. —The Washington Post, October 18, 2021. Photo: Some members of the Nigerian Armed Forces Sniper Unit. Stefan Heunis/AFP via Getty Images via The Conversation, October 18, 2021 |