WHEN I AM THE DAY

by Buff Whitman-Bradley




If I were ever to be a day
I would be pleased and proud
To be like this one
Modestly performing its tasks
With competence and confidence
And economy of effort
Quietly and carefully arranging above us
The great clouds bulging
With this afternoon’s rain
Spreading pale gray light
Among the hillsides, the woods
The neighborhoods and parks
And playing fields
Toting armloads of song birds
From tree to tree to tree
Mingling with flowers and bushes
With forgotten grasses in roadside ditches
And vacant lots
Conducting the cantankeous oratorio
Of a chaos of crows
Occupying the bare branches
Of the neighbor’s walnut tree.
And when I am the day
No mauling of the climate
No wars or drone strikes
Or collateral damage
No indecency in high places
No exploitation or economic collapse
No children starved or abused or neglected
No drama, no flash-and-dazzle
Or whoop-dee-doo
A plain, ordinary day of abundant courtesy
And generosity
And a night flooded with stars
To still the noise
And remind the crowd at the top of the food chain
Whence they have come
And where they are bound.


Buff Whitman-Bradley's poems have appeared in many print and online journals. His most recent books are To Get Our Bearings in this Wheeling World and Cancer Cantata. With his wife Cynthia, he produced the award-winning documentary film Outside In and, with the MIRC film collective, made the film Por Que Venimos. His interviews with soldiers refusing to fight in Iraq and Afghanistan were made into the book About Face: Military Resisters Turn Against War. He lives in northern California.

THE LANGUAGE CAGE

by Alejandro Escudé

Available from Nielsen Magic

     “Sir, we don’t use cages for children,” the DHS secretary said. “Yes. I’m being as clear as I can, sir. Respectfully, I’m trying to answer your question.”
     “Just yes or no. Are we still putting children in cages?” [House Homeland Security Chairman Bennie] Thompson asked again.
     “To my knowledge, [Customs and Border Patrol] never purposely put a child in a cage,” [Kirstjen] Nielsen stated.

—Salon, March 6, 2019

When the child first enters the cage,
The spaces in the chain-link are made of words.
The words are in Spanish, they read, jaula, carcel,
A series of synonyms meaning the same thing.
A child is also the child entering; one could
Make a cage out of anything. Even sunbeams.
The doorway, a  gleaming nexus of rays,
the benches made of aurora borealis green,
and the child would be a child sitting on it, waiting
for the wound in her to heal with a parent’s touch.
There are many words, and also, there aren’t any others.
The immigrant is an outsider, an illegal, an alien.
Words on their own never show compassion.


Alejandro Escudé published his first full-length collection of poems My Earthbound Eye in September 2013. He holds a master’s degree in creative writing from UC Davis and teaches high school English. Originally from Argentina, Alejandro lives in Los Angeles with his wife and two children.

THE CHILDREN MAKE THEIR PRAYER RUGS

by Tricia Knoll

Make new the angel’s carpet.

—Nezami Ganjavi, twelfth-century Iranian poet

Their lesson aimed more at special space
than Islam. Rough sketches to begin –
where an arrow might point to more than home
or maybe home: an old oak with withered ways,
a swing or jungle gym, grandfather’s path
toward twilight. For Marcus the soccer field,
boot to ball. One drew lines of fields of maize.
Another lupine. Lines they erased of bullets
flying, having learned the word trajectory,
painted over with the flame-gold of stars.

Then to measure fabric cut for a lay-down,
a tribute to their sizes. Refuge trimmed to fit.
Help with sewing on a fun of fringe.
Though they could not spell reverence,
a girl with braids cut and pasted spaniel eyes.
The boy who lisped drew his mother’s cello.
Lilacs appeared here and there as the blue vase
in the classroom broadcast May.
Timothy made a map of where his bicycle
could and could not go.

The template suggested a centered door,
open to what lies inside.
Lily drew her heart caught in a rib cage.
Aneshia, the stone library at story time.
John, his father gone to war.
Alejandro, his mother on the other side.

Low, slow background tunes of flutes
and piano. Soft the teacher made the mood
for work, then lowered shades for rest
in a world which all knew well
floated no magic carpets.

Author’s Note: Recently I heard a Unitarian Universalist spiritual education teacher say that kids in her classes were going to make their own prayer rugs in celebration of Ramadan. That sparked my imagination: what would it be like to make your own prayer rug in the days of so many school shootings and the separation of young children from their parents due to immigration injustices. 

Tricia Knoll is a Vermont poet. Her most recent collection is How I Learned To Be White—poetry that explores the roots of white privilege in education, ancestry, childhood and culture.