Despite PhDs,
administrators will fail
the test of protest.
William Aarnes lives in Manhattan.
Today's News . . . Today's Poem
The New Verse News
presents politically progressive poetry on current events and topical issues.
Despite PhDs,
administrators will fail
the test of protest.
William Aarnes lives in Manhattan.
I type “Is Bisan” in the search bar
and the next two words appear automatically
with their furtive question mark, “still alive?”
Bisan, a Palestinian journalist popped into my Facebook feed
one morning during this latest Mideast roil,
her fresh, round face full of promise
her troubled brown eyes alert as she posted
cell phone videos of the wreckage of Palestine, the slaughter of the people.
The videos are raw, wound the eyes, sear the soul.
She posts each time she must flee, relocate,
so many displacements now she’s lost count.
One day she shows us her favorite flower
the passionate poppy, Hannoun, red, alive
pushing forth in the spring air,
another day she videos a small boy selling homemade potato chips.
“Delicious, tasty!” she says, almost smiling,
boys flying kites on the beach behind her.
These moments are her sustenance
as she shares pictures of her home in the Gaza ruins,
a video of the day a bomb at Al-Shifa hospital just missed her
by two minutes,
her refugee life in Rafah,
stories of others spit out by this war
hundreds of thousands with no safe place to go,
their way home stalled, like the peace talks.
Bisan is 27.
She is forthright, emotional, outraged,
bewildered.
She wonders, "Where is help? Why is this allowed to go on?"
Seven months now.
She looks into the phone’s lens. Begs, “Don’t get used to
what is happening in Gaza!”
She is searching for rationality, for assistance.
I will keep searching for her,
pray she can send more videos of children flying their kites,
sending up wishes,
pray that those wishes get answered.
Karen Warinsky is the author of three collections: Gold in Autumn (2020), Sunrise Ruby (2022 Human Error Publishing), and Dining with War (2023 Alien Buddha Press); a former finalist of the Montreal International Poetry Contest; a Best of the Net nominee; and runs Poets at Large.
Philadelphia toddler dies after shooting herself in the eye with father’s unsecured gun: police. —New York Post, April 8, 2024 |
by Alice Sims-Gunzenhauser
in memoriam: Faith Ringgold, October 8, 1930 - April 13, 2024
Part I, #4: Sunflowers Quilting Bee at Arles by Faith Ringgold |
Because when I make art,then I'm free.
PBS, March 8, 2024 |
Standing at the crossroads, black with traffic
Waiting for the little green man to tell me I could go
When a child, quick as a nightmare, broke from its mother’s hand
Ran beside me, looking back at her, shrieking, into the road.
Without thought I dived, catching at the child
Bringing it to me and to its mother,
Just as you in my place would have done.
Sometimes, my people, your child becomes my child
Your love becomes my love
Your blood is mine.
But now! What are we thinking now, my people?
For years the children have played, been pushed
Into the middle of the road
And we have turned our face away.
But now, when we are forced to see them
When we are forced to see
We turn our face again?
What are we thinking my people?
Let tears wound our cheeks
For what we’ve done.
Let fear wound our minds
That we think so.
Tell me you love them my people, or I am lost.
Show me you love them my people,
Or all we are together is gone.
Mark Svendsen prefers concrete to other more porous materials with which to pave his mind but, even then, cracks eventually appear and poems, like weeds of the mind, take root and must be dealt with summarily. He lives in Zilzie, Australia with his partner. There, she writes music, and he writes things – in an attempt to maintain homeostasis.
The judge says,
These convictions confirm
repeated acts, or lack of acts,
that could have halted
an oncoming runaway train—
the parents who’d purchased
the weapon,
the unstable son who had killed
with the weapon,
the genocide in Gaza
the US and UK giving
the weapons
repeatedly,
the unstable Israel which kills
with weapons,
repeatedly,
a runaway train
that could have been halted.
Will anyone be convicted?
Lavinia Kumar’s latest book is Spirited American Women: Early Writers, Artists, & Activists—very short prose of near 90 amazing women writers, poets, publishers, painters, artists, abolitionists, early suffragettes, and activists.
State police in Massachusetts have begun implementing a program to improve interactions with people on the autism spectrum, building upon legislation that won Senate approval in January and remains before a House committee. —WBUR, April 10, 2024 |
how to avoid and maintain eye contact
and knowing the inherent dangers of both
how to calmly comply with contradicting orders
how to remain silent while being screamed at
how to contend with the confusion of sarcasm
or being called “boy” when over the age of 12
how to hold hands at 10 and 2 until told otherwise
how and where to store their blue envelope
how and where to store their blue envelope for safe retrieval
how to retrieve their blue envelope safely
how to remain safe while retrieving their blue envelope
how to make no sudden movements while retrieving their blue envelope
how to retrieve their blue envelope while making no sudden movements
how to forget Steven Washington, Stephon Watts,
Dainell Simmons, Troy Canales, Osaze Osagie,
Matthew Rushin, Ryan Gainer, and…
Source: The Guardian |
by Felicia Nimue Ackerman
“Trump’s abortion position” by Dave Whamond |
Days after saying that abortion policies should be left to the states, former President Donald J. Trump on Wednesday criticized an Arizona court ruling for upholding an 1864 law that banned nearly all abortions...Yet even as he suggested his disapproval...Mr. Trump defended the position he took in a video statement on Monday, when he said that states should weigh in on abortion through legislation. —The New York Times, April 10, 2024, Updated April 13, 2024.
Trump varies his stand on abortion.
If only his prospects were dim.
This country could ward off distortion
By taking a stand against him.
Felicia Nimue Ackerman is a professor of philosophy at Brown University and has had over 280 poems in places including American Atheist, The American Scholar, Better Than Starbucks, The Boston Globe, The Chronicle of Higher Education, Down in the Dirt, The Emily Dickinson International Society Bulletin, Free Inquiry, The Galway Review, Light Poetry Magazine, Lighten Up Online, The Los Angeles Times, The New York Daily News, The New York Times, Options (Rhode Island's LGBTQ+ magazine), The Providence Journal, Scientific American, Sparks of Calliope, Time Magazine, The Wall Street Journal, and Your Daily Poem. She has also had three previous poems in The New Verse News.