Issue 2.1 Now Available!

New Verse Review 2.1: Winter 2025

The winter issue of New Verse Review is now available at www.newversereview.com. The poems are organized in loose thematic clusters, so if you have the time, you may enjoy reading the issue from beginning to end. Many thanks to the contributors, and a special thanks to poet-philosopher-photographer extraordinaire Matthew King for providing the beautiful cover photograph.

Here are seven wintry poems as a sampler from the issue.

“I Saw Winter’s Witches” by Tricia Knoll

More than one, those scraggly black locusts
lining the gravel road to the white farmhouse
and a collapsing barn. Barren: winter unveils
twisted fingers of eerie malaise

planted for fenceposts rumored to
last longer than stone. Suckering up
as toxic clones that scratch wicked
turns of withered phrases on pewter sky.

That fence hems the pasture, last
effort to contain the emptiness
of a low sun setting on fallow pasture. If
winter witch seems too fanciful, 

thorns too cruel, wind too stiff to break,
remember locusts’ white droops
beguile honeybees in soft seasons –
witches hide in green leaf-ery. 

Tricia Knoll's poetry appears widely in journals as diverse as Kenyon Review and New Verse News as well as nine collections, either chapbook or full-length. Two came out in 2024: Wild Apples (Fernwood Press) and The Unknown Daughter (Finishing Line Press.) She is a Contributing Editor to the online journal Verse Virtual. Website: triciaknoll.com

“The Mail Carrier” by Jean L. Kreiling

"Neither snow nor rain nor heat nor gloom of night stays these couriers from the swift completion of their appointed rounds.”           

 —inscription on the James A. Farley Post Office Building, New York           

She likes the nor that strides between
the weather words; it seems to lean
against their perils and insist
that she can, too. She hasn’t missed
a day so far, and she has seen

and slogged through nasty ones. She’s keen
on challenges to her routine:
facing a storm provides a twist
she likes. The nor

declares no threat shall intervene
as she delivers magazine
and card and bill. Survivalist
of sorts, she’s ready to persist
when atmospheric moods turn mean;
she likes the nor.

Jean L. Kreiling is the author of three collections of poems; her fourth will be published in 2025. Her work has been awarded the Kim Bridgford Memorial Sonnet Prize, the Rhina Espaillat Poetry Prize, and the Frost Farm Prize, among other honors. An Associate Poetry Editor for Able Muse: A Review of Poetry, Prose & Art, she lives on the coast of Massachusetts.

“That Seventies Poem” by Alex Rettie

Watching hockey after dark:
Guy Lafleur and Bobby Clarke,
Esposito, Dryden, Shack.
All the names still take me back
to those winter weekend nights –

power plays, hat tricks, and the fights
that would always make my dad
mad as hell. “This stuff is bad
for the sport,” he always said,
as an unprotected head
 
(before helmets) hit the ice.
We thought it was paradise
(Dave and me) when overtime
meant that we stayed up past nine
forty-five or later still.

When Dave Hodge (or sometimes Bill
Hewitt) called out the first stars
and the crowds went to their cars
in Buffalo or Montreal,
we’d be headed down the hall.

Alex Rettie writes from Calgary, Alberta. His recent poems are in or forthcoming from SoFloPoJo, The Rush, New Verse Review, The Borough, and Dappled Things.

“Early or Late” by George Lang

Early or late you woke
to revive the waning fire.
Numb asleep I still could hear

splinter the shingle you broke,
against closed lids see flare
the flash as kindling took.

I was roused by sleight
and saw, crouching in a nimbus
of flame stirred up from embers

a sylph afire, a sprite,
the camber of your members
bathed in amber light.

George Lang was born in Houston and left as soon as he could. After a stint in West Africa, he ended up in Canada where he had an academic career as a comparatist. He retired in 2009 and devoted himself to poetry and translations from a variety of languages. His personal website is www.alteritas.net/GXL/.

“Snowed In” by Paul J. Pastor

The snow has swelled to lick the windowsill
with its dead tongue. The luxury of chill
has favored every creaking of the eaves.
The laurel hedge regrets its emerald leaves.

All things are either torpid or they shake.
The wind carves drifts like some ghost’s birthday cake.
And everything stands naked, bony, true.
Somehow, it’s all not half as cold as you.

Paul J. Pastor is a widely published writer, poet, and critic, Executive Editor of Nelson Books, and author of several books, most recently The Locust Years: Poems, forthcoming in 2025. He lives in Oregon.

“The Road of Bones” by Mary R. Finnegan

To reach the pole of ferocity, one must cross the bent spine
of the Kolymskya trassa. It is best to limit visits to the month
of October after the road is purged of springtime’s fallen trees
and before summer’s mud freezes into a sepulcher of ice and invisibility.
 
No matter the time of year, this road is not for the gutless.
One mistake can lead to death. There are rapacious bears. Truck drivers,
hungry, blind-drunk, and road-ravaged, may occasionally take aim at humans
instead of reindeer. And, of course, the ticks cause encephalitis.
 
This highway was built by the Zek, elite volunteers, special settlers
of the curative island country of Gulag. Despite their misfortunes,
the Zek dug deep within, devoted themselves completely to this road’s
construction so Stalin could have his gold and silver, his platinum and oil.

When no rock was available, the Zek donated their bones.
When mortar was nowhere to be found, they gave the meat off their femurs,
buttocks, biceps. Their livers and hearts and lungs filled the gaps
between dirt and stone. Nothing was wasted, not even their bulleted brains.

There are no maps to guide one through this land. There is only
a single road and everyone knows where it leads. Like its former inhabitants,
visitors may find themselves stranded due to grave conditions.
If this occurs, don the mask of sorrow. Upon leaving, forget everything.

Mary R. Finnegan is a freelance writer and editor. Her poetry, essays, and stories can be found in Ekstasis, Lydwine Journal, American Journal of Nursing, Catholic Digest, Amethyst Review, Convivium, and elsewhere. She is the Social Media Editor at Dappled Things and Deputy Editor at Wiseblood Books. Mary is currently pursuing her MFA in Creative Writing at the University of St. Thomas in Houston.

“Bloom” by Sydney Lea

My good ear up on the pillow, I woke to intricate cantillations
of a winter wren and cheer up! cheer up! from a virtual covey of robins.

Then stunning whiteness raided the room. In the hazy dawn, that light
made any brooding absurd. Our magnolia stood in prodigal blossom.

Its appearance explained the light but not its effect, which I still can’t explain.
Downstairs I found my wife on her knees to comfort our hip-sore retriever.

She arose, we lingered at two cups of coffee, looking out at the tree,
which we mutually, mutely proclaimed a sign at last of the death of winter.

When she stood to reach a plate on a shelf, the tail of her shirt lifted slightly,
unveiling a swath of midriff as pale as those indescribable flowers.

I caught my breath, shocked motionless, and felt as so often the stirring
of that recurring vision– mornings, bloom, a love unending.   

A former Pulitzer finalist in poetry, Sydney Lea served as founding editor of New England Review and was Vermont’s Poet Laureate from 2011 to 2015. In 2021, he was presented with his home state’s highest distinction of its kind, The Governor’s Award for Excellence in the Arts. He has published twenty-four books: two novels, six volumes of personal and three of critical essays, and sixteen poetry collections, most recently What Shines (Four Way Books, NYC, 2023). His latest book of personal essays, Such Dancing as We Can, is now available from The Humble Essayist Press, and his second novel, Now Look, has recently been published by Downeast Books.