by Julie Weiss
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“4-year-old migrant girl, other kids go to court in NYC with no lawyer: 'The cruelty is apparent.’” —Gothamist, April 22, 2025
We order mile-high hamburgers,
chicken fingers for the kids,
clink glasses as if the world
isn´t spiraling toward some terrible
demise. There aren´t enough colors
in the complimentary crayon box
to draw the dread prowling
my body, or the howls
of all the people being erased
so I praise my children´s
artwork as if their puppies
and bunnies could charm
the shit off the lips of fascists.
They drag fries through ketchup.
Every analogy on our plates
is a choking hazard. Somewhere
in a country that´s being stripped,
shaved, and tortured, a child
who once celebrated a birthday,
a victory, a graduation, an award
at a restaurant like this one
is being dragged into an unmarked
van. My daughter´s medal glistens
my grief back to me. I blame
the onions, a speck of dust,
yesterday´s pollen. I don´t say
your surnames could get you
arrested, if you lived in the US.
We laugh at the latest memes
as if the faces weren´t fireballs
waiting for the right moment
to mushroom. As if the biggest
aggravation today is the rain.
Julie Weiss (she/her) is the author of The Places We Empty, her debut collection published by Kelsay books, and two chapbooks, The Jolt and Breath Ablaze: Twenty-One Love Poems in Homage to Adrienne Rich, Volumes I and II, published by Bottlecap Press. Her second collection Rooming with Elephants was published in February, 2025 by Kelsay Books. "Poem Written in the Eight Seconds I Lost Sight of My Children" was selected as a 2023 finalist for Best of the Net. She won Sheila-Na-Gig´s editor´s choice award for "Cumbre Vieja" and was a finalist for the 2022 Saguaro Prize. Recent work appears in Variant Lit, The Westchester Review, Up The Staircase Quarterly, and others. Originally from California, she lives with her wife and children in Spain.
