'My Unreliable Retrieval System'

Welcome news is so rare in our withered literary culture, we are obligated to celebrate good new work when we encounter it. The summer 2026 issue of New Verse Review has been published, and it includes work by several of our finest established poets, as well as poems by newcomers worth reading. You’ll find three epigrams by R.L. Barth, including “McNamara’s 100,000”: “Moronic? Bumbling? Drooling? Poor? Sign here. There are 100,000 openings In McNamara’s scheme. You’ll learn some things You might convert to skills; and never fear, If under fire you don’t know zig from zag, Be sure he’ll give you your own body-bag.” Mike Juster’s “Nothing in Hell Is Up to Snuff” is dedicated to his late friend the poet X.J. Kennedy: “It rankles us that Satan doesn’t care for process. Brimstone shipments are too slow for summer fun, so flesh is roasted rare, and He has banished Barry Manilow without an explanation. Long ago, He welcomed new arrivals with a show of evil…not now! He seems unaware that he…