WHEN HE’S GONE

by Kay White Drew

AI-generated graphic by NightCafé for The New Verse News.

…do unto his Mar-a-Lago North
what he has done to the Presidential residence:
tear it limb from limb, let
the wrecking ball swing free.

Gather the people from the four directions
to bear witness. Sing and chant, each
in your own tongue. Release your grief
and joy: the reign of terror is finally over.
Trash or melt down the tawdry gold things.
Remove with care the remnants
of happier days and the relics of the founders.

When the dust has settled, bring sages
and shamans and clergy of all denominations
to purify the space with prayers, smudge-sticks
and incense, libations and offerings
in rituals of repentance and reconciliation.

Dig a new foundation, build a new structure
that reflects our mongrel variety,
embraces us in all our multifarious glory.

       Not the White House.
       The People’s House.

Kay White Drew is a retired physician whose poems appear in various anthologies and internet outlets including The Intima, Gargoyle, and The New Verse News. She’s also published short stories and several essays, one of which was nominated for a Pushcart Prize, and a memoir, Stress Test, about medical school in the 1970s. She lives in Rockville, MD with her husband. Reading and spending time in nature keep her sane(ish) in these difficult times.

DID YOU SEE AN INFANTILE, JUVENILE FLIGHT OF FANCY?

by Raymond Nat Turner

"The List Is Long" by Nick Anderson

Did you see signs by victims of 

One Big Beautiful Bank Job

Showing up in mighty millions, 

Flexing Power Of The People?

Did you see frightened juvenile, AI-generated content—

In response?

Did you see the fecal Führer’s fascist flight of fancy—the

Diapered dictator dropping dreck, Making America Grate Again?

Did you see them go from Government Shutdown 

To government shit-down—lousy, loose stool 

Luftwaffe flooding the Zone with elephant excrement—

Making America Grate Again?

Did you see power of the numerically mighty People

Scare fascists shitless—into fertilizing

New crops of activists, militants and revolutionaries

Growing robust—exponentially and urgently!

Raymond Nat Turner is a NYC poet; Black Agenda Report's Poet-in-Residence; and founder/co-leader of the jazz-poetry ensemble UpSurge!NYC.

THE GREAT LOUVRE CAPER

by James Schwartz

I map the security cameras 

Locked windows 

& locations 

Tap

Tap 

Tap 

I disable a camera 

My Amish father 

Is behind me

In hot pursuit 

Tap

Tap

I snare 

The painting

Cubist.

Tap

Tap

Tap

My Amish father

Rolls the dice

Still behind me.

Tap

Tap

The window is locked.

Tap

Tap

Tap

On a winter afternoon

We enjoy the board game 

Clue: The Great Museum Caper.

Tap

Tap

Tap

A teenage memory 

Forgotten until headlines 

Of the Great Louvre Caper.

Tap

Tap

I make my escape.

James Schwartz is a Detroit based poet and author of various poetry collections including The Literary Party: Growing Up Gay and Amish in America (2011) and most recently Big Island Beatnik: Poetry & Photography from the Lower East Rift Zone (Alien Buddha Press, 2025). queeraspoetry.bsky.social 

NO KINGS ALLOWED

by DJ Benhaim

Cartoon by Omar Al Abdallat.

I.

In the beginning was asphalt.
And the word was protest.
And the word was pixelated,
buffering between freedom and feed.

A crowd of imperfect citizens
chants like a country relearning its name.
The chorus is improvised:
No kings allowed—no crowns, no conquerors,
no saviors in tailor-made sympathy.

Their voices ripple through barricades,
become algorithm, become echo—
a national heartbeat with a stutter.



II.

I have seen democracy drag itself
through a century of luminous slogans,
its reflection flickering in each broken screen.
Still insisting: I am not done.

Once, the Founders gathered by candlelight—
afraid of monarchs, afraid of mobs.
They drafted compromise as scripture,
named it law and order,
muttered prayers to Reason
as though Reason were a god inclined to listen.

Some nights I wonder:
who will amend the amendments,
who will serve the servants,
who will remind us that equality
was never intended to mimic sameness?



III.

—No Kings Allowed—
the maxim mutates through the crowd.
Each repetition, a revision:

No Kings (but maybe a firm hand).
No Kings (but someone must decide).
No Kings (unless it’s my kind).

The chant becomes confession.
The confession becomes commerce.
Every democracy finds its vendors.

A man sells T-shirts beside a food truck:
LIMITED EDITION FREEDOM.
The poet buys one—
because irony, still, is cheaper than hope.



IV.

O Republic,
child of contradiction—
you legislate mercy
and enforce it with tear gas.
You proclaim all men,
then redact the margins.
Your pledge is a mirror:
every mouth repeats it—
none can see its cracks.

Still,
you endure—
awkward and miraculous,
a choir harmonizing
in seventeen unresolved keys.



V.

Night closes in.
The crowd separates into numbers.
The flag waves like a faulty signal.

Somewhere, a migrant waits at the checkpoint,
a senator rehearses his talking points,
a teacher grades an essay on liberty
with a trembling red pen.

And the poet—our witness,
our reluctant chorus—
writes in the margin of his notebook:

We are not failing,
we are rehearsing.

He closes the book,
steps into the dark,
and feels the fragile promise
of a nation still deciding
whether freedom needs a throne—
or simply
a place to sit down and listen.

DJ Benhaim is an emerging poet from the Windy City—Chicago, Illinois, whose work explores current events, global awareness as well as Afro American culture and the preservation of its stories, history, and legacy. An avid supporter of the city’s spoken word and poetry community, he can often be found cycling along the lakefront, soaking up the sounds of local jazz and blues, or experimenting with a camera in hand. His work has appeared or is forthcoming in Sheila-Na-Gig’s AMPLIFY Anthology, Kinsman Quarterly, and African Writer Magazine.

GATHERING FOR OUR CAVE SOON

by Jerrice J Baptiste

"Justice in the Trump Era" by Nick Anderson

Unfettered and Unaccountable: 

How Trump is Building a Violent, Shadowy Federal Police Force —ProPublica, October 18, 2025

Yesterday, the autumn wind almost blew 
me away. If I were thirty pounds lighter 
like I’ve always wanted, I would’ve joined 

leaves in the lake. I savor figs, dried plums,
mango slices we share together in the royal 
blue ceramic bowl, you gifted for my birthday

in April. And much time has passed and we need 
to gather dried berries and nuts like our friends 
the squirrels and rabbits. We will need to eat only 

one of each roasted almond, white cashew, walnut
at a time. Under the crumpled sapphire-colored 
blanket we will hide flat on our backs in the black 

onyx night, in the cave we will build. Silence, Silence 
and the goddess Artemis will protect us vulnerable 
women and children. We will quickly hush, hush
  
like kindergarteners at play with shadow puppets when 
adults enter a room. Whoever is searching won’t find 
us, when their heavy boots enter our cave, their hands 

shining light in each corner. Artemis will make us
invisible. Now the winds of autumn pick up speed. 
It is a brewing noise of citizens, and leaves. 

Can you hear what’s churning?  Do you feel 
the urgency of the people? The collective shouting, 
shouting, shouting, and not just a handful.  Let us 

gather, gather our portions soon and build our caves. 
Noise increases, increases loud firecrackers. Are you 
the poets who are not afraid of the bombs?

Jerrice J Baptiste is a poet, educator and facilitator of poetry for healing and self-expression. Her new book of prose poems is titled Coral in the Diaspora published by Abode Press (August 2024).  Her writing has been published and is forthcoming in The New Verse News, Artemis Journal, Urthona Buddhism and Art Magazine, The Dewdrop, Shambhala Times, The Yale Review, Wax Poetry & Art, Black Fox Literary Magazine, Mantis, Penumbra Literary & Art Journal, The Banyan Review, Kosmos Journal, Silver Birch Press, and many others. Her collaborative songwriting and poetry are featured on the Grammy-nominated album Many Hands Family Music for Haïti. 

READING THE WEAVING

by Michelle DeRose

It is the job of appointed bards

to blare new fables daily.

All hail the king! what they must sing

even when they know it’s silly.

 

The lyres are loud and always part

of making legends from myth,

like how each king saved everything

with a gift from an underground smith.

 

But there are other ways to tell a tale:

we know by now the value

of a shroud, a drape, of tapestries

because of what they tell you.

 

The besieged weave too, may hide their looms

but know well how to shuttle

‘round the rigid lines of what is warped,

are fully prepared to scuttle

 

the whole design if they’re so inclined–

some yarns are simply cruel.

Unraveling is a strategy

when you’re flanked by fools.

 

Some legends crafted from whole cloth

can be fought with embroidered cunning.

Let linens get thin with what’s not in,

say everything else with couching.

Professor Emerita of English at Aquinas College, Michelle lives and writes (mostly) from Grand Rapids, Michigan. This poem is for all the knitters, crocheters, and Aunt Tifas who were out in public with their arts on No Kings Day, carrying on a tradition at least as old as Penelope.

THE ANSWER

by Indran Amirthanayagam

There is justice until 

it meets injustice, 

tyranny until 

stopped by bravery, 

refusal, non-violent 

rebellion, insurrection, 

the big broad fat no. 

Now, I am calling 

all citizens, migrants, 

the documented,

to come out 

to the square 

to link hands

and wait for 

the ICE Man 

to come, and ask 

the masked avenger 

in aviator glasses: 

what America 

do you represent? 

What laws 

are you imposing?

And, by the way,

the undocumented

among us 

have been advised 

not to show up 

for your court appointments.

Indran Amirthanayagam writes a Substack. His publications include El bosque de deleites fratricidas ( RIL Editores), Seer (Hanging Loose Press),The Runner's Almanac (Spuyten Duyvil), Powèt Nan Pò A: Poet of the Port (Mad Hat), and Ten Thousand Steps Against the Tyrant (Broadstone Books). He is the translator of Kenia Cano’s Animal For The Eyes (Dialogos Books) and Origami: Selected Poems of Manuel Ulacia (Dialogos Books). He edits The Beltway Poetry Quarterly, hosts the Poetry Channel on YouTube, and publishes poetry books with Sara Cahill Marron at Beltway Editions.

THEY

by Jim Hanson

Cartoon by Ann Telnaes

They’re running it, ruining it
off the rails, in the ditch
sell the wreckage, get rich.

Truth killed, collateral causality
lies arise, as reality
deftly made, as cool aide.

Dollar inflated, debt escalated
hyper crypto, value to go
assets bereft, nothing left.

Empire today, for USA
Greenland now, Canada then
Ukraine to lose, Russia to win.

Love incarnate, just for the lust
Epstein teens, Trump playboy queens
sex for pay, with NDA.

Immigrants, detention camps
hit squads, brown shirts worn black
dream children here, sent back.

Justice ignored, polls soared
guilty of crime, no time
impeachment twice made, still stayed.

Troops march, mayors watch
cities, occupied
politics, on wrong side.

Money sought, elections bought
billionaires gave, taxes to waive
offices for sale, free from jail.

Republicans scared, of primary loss
all bow down, to the MAGA boss
funny money, from dark accounts.

Legacy seen, power absolute
pride resolute, for life to be
none than, the presidency.

Jim Hanson is a retired university researcher and sociologist who lives in the St. Louis area. He has published four poetry collections, also some thirty single poems, and is a member of the St. Louis Poetry Center and Illinois State Poetry Society Southern Chapter.