PERIOD PAINS

by Adele Evershed

On the radio, they talk about having a temper, as if it’s a wild creature, something you house in your chest—either caged or rampant. But the bigger conversation is about the trouble with boys, fueled by the latest viral offering on Netflix: Adolescence, which touches on the toxic brew of manhood and violence against women. I’ve watched the show, and unlike most sausage-stuffing series, it offers no explanations—no cathartic “I guessed that all along” or shocking dénouements. You’re left with more questions than answers. It’s simply a story about someone’s son who does something bad, and in the margins, there are glimpses of misogyny, of mob thinking, illustrated with kidney beans and dynamite emojis—look them up, especially if you have teenagers.

But then a man rings in and talks about how “what it means to be a woman” has changed over time, how this has been embraced and encouraged, and unbidden, the Beyoncé song Run the World starts a beat in my chest that tames my beast. Then he adds that “what it means to be a new man” has been ignored, but when asked how to combat that, he’s stumped. Finally, he says, “We need to talk about it.” And there’s the rub—because in my experience, men like to run the world, but find it hard to talk about things they consider “female vices” like accountability, coping strategies, and keeping their temper.

blood moon…
I ask my husband to buy
some tampons
 

Adele Evershed is a Welsh writer who swapped the valleys for the American East Coast. You can find some of her poetry and prose in Grey Sparrow Journal, The New Verse News, Gyroscope, Modern Haiku, Frogpond, Janus Lit, and upcoming in Poetry Wales. Adele has two poetry collections, Turbulence in Small Spaces (Finishing Line Press) and The Brink of Silence (Bottlecap Press). Her third collection In the Belly of the Wail is upcoming with Querencia Press. 

PIETA

by Kay White Drew

for Women’s History Month

To the women in the Vietnam memorial:
One of you holds the dying soldier, one hand
to his chest. One hand, not two. You seem to know
he is beyond CPR, past the point where
anything can save him. The new volunteer
who crouches behind you, stricken,
in her fresh fatigues and boonie hat, must
know this too, green as she is. Your hand rests
on his shrapnel-filled chest not to rescue,
but to comfort, to say, “You’re not alone.”
Your sister-in-arms who’s become
the best friend you’ll ever have,
lays her hand along your arm
for mutual comfort and support
as she calls for help out of habit
in her resonant voice. To a compatriot:
“Need a doctor over here!” To the universe:
“Enough! For the love of God, enough!”

In a time when petty tyrants rewrite
history to suit their bigotry, your granite
tableau stands solid in resistance.

Kay White Drew is a retired physician whose poems appear in various anthologies and internet outlets including 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. She lives in Rockville, MD with her husband. Spending time in nature helps her stay sane in these difficult days.

LET’S REDEFINE POWER

by Melanie Choukas-Bradley

This cherry blossom
Fluttering down three days from now
Holds more power than a billy club
 
This daffodil trumpeting spring
Heralds the quickening glory
 
You can crush you can kill
But you can’t do this
Unfurl sweetly to the sun

 
Melanie Choukas-Bradley is wandering among the cherry blossoms in Washington, DC. She is the author of several nature books, including City of Trees, A Year in Rock Creek Park, and Wild Walking. Many of her poems have been featured in The New Verse News and Writing in a Woman’s Voice.

YESTERDAY'S WREN

by Al Ortolani

My feet are cold. My financial
value is diminishing. I am baffled
by the future, except for my
demise, which is guaranteed
by the history of birds like me.
Birds who sing as if today
is forever, as if all we need is 
enough seed, a few twigs for
a nest, and the egg we share
with its speckled shell, protected
by Social Security, by Medicare,
by whatever we gave ourselves
yesterday when we planned for 
tomorrow, which is cracking today.
I am memorizing country codes
so I can use my phone to call for help.
Hello Portugal, this is an American 
wren speaking, can I rent a birdhouse? 
I am a Boomer. I won’t sing for long.

Al Ortolani, a winner of the Rattle Chapbook Prize, has been featured in Garrison Keillor’s Writer’s Almanac, Ted Kooser’s American Life in Poetry, and George Bilgere’s Poetry Town. He was the recipient of the Bill Hickok Humor Award from I-70 Review. He’s a contributing editor to the Chiron Review.

WE'RE SITTING AROUND A TABLE NOT FAR FROM THE RUSSIAN BORDER

by Ron Riekki

A Chinese artist, a Russian musician, and American poet,

and we talk about surveillance, sharing how dangerous it is

to be an artist, after speaking with a local who told us about

the tensions with Russia, how they're like a choking fog,

and the musician from Russia says it's all propaganda there,

says she doesn't care, that her voice will never be voiceless,

tells us about being taken in by the Russian police and how

she brutalized them with truth, was let go, and then let go

of her country, emigrating, immigrating, Euro-ricocheting around,

and hanging out with Pussy Riot, doing anti-war campaigns,

and we speak of the ten percent of the Russian population

being tortured, and she speaks of physical torture and

emotional torture and the torture of propaganda, and

the Chinese artist talks about holding up signs in Hong

Kong that were all white, not allowed to have signs with

actual words, so this haunting image, this effective image

of hundreds of artists and writers and protestors and students

holding up these white signs, ghost signs meant to haunt

politicians, and the American poet talks about being hunted

by the Trump administration for a pro-Islamic, pro-immigrant

tweet, how the administration administered paperwork to his

home, pages and pages and pages of warning, how watched

we are everywhere, he says, he thinks, he feels, and we are

near the Russian border, except it's shut down, too dangerous,

and here we are, doing art that is too dangerous, and having

this conversation that is too dangerous, so dangerous that

we turn off our phones to make sure we are not being listened

to, because we want to create the form of our words, rush

home and turn our conversations into lyrics and artwork

and this poem you are reading now, written near a border

that is rotting with worry, a border that lacks moonlight tonight.

Ron Riekki co-edited Undocumented: Great Lakes Poets Laureate on Social Justice.

SNOW WHITE VISITS JAIL FOR A PHOTO OP

by Michelle DeRose

Kristi Noem wears gold Rolex to inspect tattooed inmates at El-Salvador mega-prison —Yahoo! news, March 28, 2025

Everything so black and white.
Her long-sleeved tee, teasingly tucked.
Black ball cap, curled tresses.
Their shirtless tattoos lined up
an aisle of canned beans.
Shaven heads beneath harsh lights.
A long shot—men stacked
like face-masked firewood in the hold.
Her lipstick. Gold around her wrist.
Their cuffs. Her arsenal.

Professor Emerita of English, Michelle DeRose lives and writes in Michigan, where one of the most prestigious state universities in the nation just announced its closure of its DEI offices. She wishes she were Canadian.

WE STILL CALL IT FREEDOM

by Phyllis Frakt

Cartoon by Nick Anderson

Do you still believe 
your world is real?
How medieval! So passé!
Abandon all hope,
enter our new reality—
facts are what we say.
 
We control the news,
can change it at our whim.
Technology will comply,
repeat the truth of every lie
in a thick mix of duplicity
on Fox, Facebook, X, AI.
 
We flood the zone,
you can't catch up.
Chaos is our game!
We still call it freedom.
But when something goes awry,
Joe Biden is to blame.

Phyllis Frakt writes poetry in New Jersey. She has published six previous poems in The New Verse News.

BIG CRUNCH

by Sally Zakariya

Dark energy, the mysterious force powering the expansion of the universe, appears to be weakening, according to a survey that could “overthrow” scientists’ current understanding of the fate of the cosmos. If confirmed, the results from the dark energy spectroscopic instrument (Desi) team at the Kitt Peak National Observatory in Arizona would have profound implications for theories about the evolution of the universe, opening up the possibility that its current expansion could eventually go into reverse in a “big crunch”. —The Guardian, March 19, 2025

Maybe we’ve all just had enough.

Raging wildfires… melting icebergs…
rising temperatures… falling birth rates…
whispers of war… growing fascism…
divided nation…

Where will it all end?

And now scientists are worried—
it looks like the universe itself
has had enough and has stopped
expanding.

Before you know it, those lady telescopes
(Nancy Grace Roman and Vera C. Rubin)
will huddle on a star, drinking tea
and tut-tutting about the end of it all.

But don’t worry.

Whether the universe starts expanding again
or—gulp—does a cosmic 180 and contracts
in a big crunch some billions of years from now,
we’ll still have plenty of time to destroy our own
little part of it in the meanwhile.

Sally Zakariya’s poetry has appeared in some 100 publications and been nominated for the Pushcart Prize. Her publications include All Alive Together, Something Like a Life, Muslim Wife, The Unknowable Mystery of Other People, Personal Astronomy, and When You Escape. She edited and designed a poetry anthology, Joys of the Table, and blogs at www.butdoesitrhyme.com.

NO ROOF, NO DOOR

by Paul Burgess

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

To get the house of which I'd dreamed,
The fastest route, or so it seemed, 
Was knocking down each door and wall, 
Destroying ceiling, den, and hall.
With wrecking ball, I'd swiftly smash
And relish every violent crash. 
 
The pile of rubble where I stand 
Was all I'd thought about or planned. 
Rebuilding seemed the easy part, 
But now I wonder where to start. 
I'd barely planned the building's frame, 
But bragged I'd surely put to shame 
The house in which I'd lived before,
Yet now, I've got no roof, no door, 
No wires, no pipes, but just a heap
Of rubble where I'll have to sleep. 

Paul Burgess lives in Lexington, Kentucky. He is the sole proprietor of a business that offers ESL, translation, and interpretation services. He speaks several languages fluently. When not writing strange poems, he enjoys playing guitar, reading, and hiking. He has contributed poems to Blue Unicorn, The Orchards, Parody, Lighten Up Online, Dirigible Balloon, The New Verse News, OEDILF, and other poetry publications.

BETTING AGAINST THE HOUSE

by Rick Ehling

Almost overnight an entire 

country reeks of three AM 

in Las Vegas’ seediest casino

Few truly smiling, everything feigned

All that fatigued desperation

Smoke and sweat settling heavy 

in dayless, temperature controlled space

Coin cups and wallets emptier

Perhaps a bit drunk  Bleary eyed 

Certainly sleepy  Blinking, 

yawning  Or were those sighs

Remembering prior buffet

A feathered line of showgirls

Well past joy’s equinox 

This crash after faux sugar 

Clinks and flashes finally 

overwhelming  Triggering 

a headache or tinnitus  Most 

clinging to whatever chance 

they no longer believe in

Many wishing they counted cards

Rick Ehling is a physician living in the SF Bay Area, working in what was once called a “safety net clinic.” He writes most mornings when he can’t sleep; this started after a family illness but has continued for much of the last decade.

SHE KNOWS HOW TO MAKE A U-TURN

by Beth Fox

Photo by Kevin Bermingham at Dreamstime.

She’s black, she’s white—
she’s a white-throated swift
moving so quickly I barely see
the male on her back as 
she barrels toward earth
in a courtship spin—
swerving at the point 
of impact, then 
hurtling upward 
again to become 
a speck in the sky.
(Black and white,
           dark and light—)
The nest—
a cup of moss and twigs
glued to the side of a sheer cliff
with saliva.
 
(I was once convinced
    that dark news 
          was really light—)
Fifty trips a day to care for chicks, 
feeding them balls of insects… instincts
as true as their flight.
 
Before dark times, I could tell
black from white… I will again, when
I can see through these reddened eyes…
    Will I/will we turn back in time   
          to see
     the brilliant blue sky?


A lover of the outdoors, Beth Fox was a finalist in four New England poetry contests and is widely published in New England. She helped seniors publish their work in an anthology, Other Voices, Other Lives. Her chapbook Reaching for the Nightingale is available at Finishing Line Press. Beth lives in Wolfeboro, NH.

SILENCE, A CROW

by Francis Opila

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

Listen
to silence at dawn
the night still holds

you by candlelight
one poem wakes you
compels you to unravel

thread by thread
in breath, out breath
harmony in this moment

your 9 AM appointment
laundry, your next hike
bombs in the Middle East

until from a nearby maple
a crow cackles
arrested for free speech

yet he calls over & over
howls of a distant train
now a dozen crows

in breath, out breath
tapping of gentle rain

Francis Opila is a rain-struck, sun-loving poet who lives in the Pacific Northwest.  His poems have appeared in Willawaw Journal, Wayfinding, Windfall, and other journals. His poetry collection Conference of the Crows was published in 2023. He enjoys performing poetry, combining recitation and playing North American wooden flutes.

HER CENTENNIAL

by Courtney Hitson

For Flannery O’Connor,  born March 25, 2025

 

You watch from inside my poems, 
especially the ones that try
to dislodge a light beyond the page. You,
so schooled in charming goodness
from a garden snake.
 
Your hands clench these serifs
and spectate another freakshow
of a decade: our three-headed
trillionaire, realities prone
to the warp of beeping boxes,
and a bankrupt, orange business
man leading the way.
 
We’ve grown much too big
for these britches, but storms
this epic? They call for shrunken inseams
and egos. I still wish
that sixty-one years’ worth of spiral
staircase didn’t divide us.
I know you’d hurl God
as if a grenade, hot and hungry
for freedom from your hands. 

Courtney Hitson teaches English at the College of the Florida Keys. As of March, 2025, she has work forthcoming in Kestrel Review, Eunoia, Qu, Sequestrum, and Eastern Iowa Review. In 2024, her poetry received three Pushcart nominations. Outside of writing, she enjoys scuba-diving, freestyle unicycling, and philosophy. Courtney and her husband, Tom (also a poet), reside in Fort Lauderdale, Florida with their two cats.

TRAFFIC JAM TRYING TO REACH THE “FIGHT OLIGARCHY TOUR”

by Susan Vespoli

Photo by Kanishka Chinnaraj, The Daily Wildcat,  March 24, 2025

“Don’t become a monster fighting monsters.”  —paraphrased Nietzsche quote

Stuck on the Mill Avenue Bridge in Tempe

a mile (Siri says an hour) from the stadium 

Bernie and AOC fill to capacity with voters

in tee-shirts that say “Resist,” “Tax the Rich,” 

“Hope Persists,” and 1000s more line up outside,

circle the arena, live stream speeches on their phones;

us trapped in the car, the woman behind us melting 

down, honking, gesturing through her windshield

for us to MOVE and my date is the kind of driver

who smiles, waves other motorists into the flow,

but she is blasting her horn, mouthing epithets,

as his jaw clenches, middle finger twitching to flip,

and I get it, but we’re gridlocked here.

My granddaughter once said, if we had a flying car, 

this wouldn’t happen, but we don’t,

so I unbuckle my seatbelt, turn around and rise

so she can see me and I give her the peace sign 

and the namaste hands, and then shrug, what can we do?

And her face looks like it might explode off her neck—

until eventually the logjam loosens and she zooms 

into the next lane, passes us, her back bumper 

stickered with peace signs.

Susan Vespoli writes from Phoenix, AZ and believes in the power of writing to stay sane. Her work has been published in The New Verse News, ONE ART, Anti-Heroin Chic, Gyroscope Review, and other cool spots. She is the author of four poetry books.