by Gil Hoy
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| Members of a family reunite through the border wall between Mexico and United States, during the "Keep our dream alive" event, in Ciudad Juarez, Chihuahua state, Mexico on December 10, 2017. Families separated by the border were reunited for three minutes through the fence that separates Ciudad Juarez Park in Mexico and Sunland in New Mexico, United States, during an event called "Keep our dream alive", organized by the Border Network for Human Rights on the International Human Rights Day. HERIKA MARTINEZ/AFP/GETTY IMAGES via Texas Public Radio |
In this poem, proper sentence
structure will be followed.
For example, sentences will start
with a capital letter and end
with a proper punctuation mark.
Sentences will be grammatically correct.
Some may say that this will likely detract
from the poem’s poetic quality,
but I’m not sure I can agree.
I’m also not sure real poems require words.
I italicize for emphasis.
For example, is an image held
in the mind of crying children—
of thousands of immigrant families
separated at the border—never
to be reunited, poetic?
Is the image symbolic and evokes
strong emotions? Is it repetitive
and sick at heart?
Are the precise words of one’s
internal dialogue describing the image
what make it poetic or not?
Can a number be a poem, or at least poetic?
Such as the title of this poem?
I will never think of “45” in the same way again.
Gil Hoy is a Boston poet and semi-retired trial lawyer who studied poetry at Boston University through its Evergreen program. Hoy previously received a B.A. in Philosophy and Political Science from Boston University, an M.A. in Government from Georgetown University, and a J.D. from the University of Virginia School of Law. He served as a Brookline, Massachusetts Selectman for four terms. Hoy’s poetry has appeared most recently in Chiron Review, TheNewVerse.News, Ariel Chart, Social Justice Poetry, Poetry24, Right Hand Pointing/One Sentence Poems, I am not a silent poet, The Potomac, Clark Street Review, the penmen review and elsewhere.