FOOTBALL WIRE, FINAL

by Indran Amirthanayagam 

Lionel Messi kisses the trophy.

We are exhausted and delirious throughout

the continent, rising and falling as our team

controlled the play and was facing an apparently

easy and merited victory with less than fifteen

minutes left and then we lost a penalty, and

two minutes later a shot from Mbappe

so powerful no goalkeeper could have

stopped it; and our players are tired

yet they must limp into injury time

 

not letting any more goals, so the mini-

match over thirty minutes can decide,

and again we go ahead and then a loose

Argentine hand touches the ball in the area,

an accident, but that of course is irrelevant

to destiny, and we are back in the penalty box

and Mbappe does not miss. Tied now

at three, we try and try but our last shots

do not hit the net, and we are left to finish

 

the match in the penalty box. Then

our goalkeeper, Martinez, our final fortress, 

stops a French penalty, then another goes 

wide, and all the Argentines score 

with precision. The game is won, 

the World Cup won. We are tired 

and barely typing on the wire, the keyboard. 

But as eyewitnesses, poets, journalists, 

we have to write our impressions out. 

Indran Amirthanayagam is the translator of Origami: Selected Poems of Manuel Ulacia (Dialogos Books). Ten Thousand Steps Against the Tyrant (BroadstoneBooks) is the newest collection of Indran's own poems. Recently published is Blue Window (Ventana Azul), translated by Jennifer Rathbun.(Dialogos Books). In 2020, Indran produced a “world" record by publishing three new poetry books written in three languages: The Migrant States (Hanging Loose Press, New York), Sur l'île nostalgique (L’Harmattan, Paris) and Lírica a tiempo (Mesa Redonda, Lima). He writes in English, Spanish, French, Portuguese, Haitian Creole and has twenty poetry books as well as a music album Rankont Dout. He edits The Beltway Poetry Quarterly and helps curate Ablucionistas. He won the Paterson Prize and received fellowships from The Foundation for the Contemporary Arts, New York Foundation for the Arts, US/Mexico Fund For Culture, and the MacDowell Colony. He hosts the Poetry Channel on YouTube and publishes poetry books with Sara Cahill Marron at Beltway Editions.

GOING HOME

by Anne Harding Woodworth

Portrait of Grant Wahl by Dan Leydon. “Grant arrived home Monday, December 12, and this transition was handled with the utmost care and sensitivity… An autopsy was performed by the New York City Medical Examiner’s Office. Grant died from the rupture of a slowly growing, undetected ascending aortic aneurysm with hemopericardium. The chest pressure he experienced shortly before his death may have represented the initial symptoms. No amount of CPR or shocks would have saved him. His death was unrelated to COVID. His death was unrelated to vaccination status. There was nothing nefarious about his death. While the world knew Grant as a great journalist, we knew him as a man who approached the world with openness and love.” —Céline Gounder, Grant’s Wife, at Substack.

      In memory of Grant Wahl

The shoot-out wasn’t over

when you left.

But you know by now

that Argentina sent

The Netherlands packing,

a fitting end to a soccer game,

to any game, really,

which is all it is we’re playing.

You, one of the lucky ones—

you turned yours into a living.

Living. You lived to the max,

free to write of parties,

beautiful vistas, catastrophes,

trivia, friends, fears, premonitions.

Your wrote down your observations

of injustice as fluidly as those

of offside or of a shoot-out.

You left early, Grant, probably

just hours before you’d posted

your “Three Thoughts” on the game.

And the Netherlands went home.

Anne Harding Woodworth’s eighth book of poetry, Gender: Two Novellas in Verse, is a Literary Titan Silver Award Winner. Her book Trouble received the 2022 William Meredith Award for Poetry.

DIASPORA FOOTBALL

by Indran Amirthanayagam

It was a difficult day at the Qatar World Cup. Our American ambassadors, 

Argentina and Brazil, both with attacking teams who strike as lightning 

and sit back as well controlling the ball, dribbling it back and forth, 

 

wearing the patience down of their European opponents—had leads 

vanish with minutes to go, the European powers striking back, 

and in the case of Croatia pulling off the upset, mighty Brazil losing 

 

on penalties. But Argentina survived. Shot its penalties with clinical 

power, and their goalkeeper used his brain to anticipate the directions 

of the Dutch kicks. I am writing this to remember a Friday in December 

 

when honor lay on the field, and glory, and also bitter defeat. This is 

the field of battle, the football field, the field of dreams, the field of 

identities, how if our country loses we shift then to its natural neighbor, 

 

overcoming regional rivalries in the name of a greater continental unity. 

Imagine how Moroccans feel now as they represent their country and all 

of Africa and all migrants too, as many have grown up away from 

 

their kingdom, in exile, when they strap on their boots to play Portugal 

in the next quarterfinal? My documenting pen will dress with them. 

The diaspora team, my friend calls not only Morocco but France, 

 

England and many others. Football is the identity card, 

the passport. Borders are fluid, 2022 composed of a motley crew 

of border crossers, migrant wonders, football envoys.

Indran Amirthanayagam is the translator of Origami: Selected Poems of Manuel Ulacia (Dialogos Books). Ten Thousand Steps Against the Tyrant (BroadstoneBooks) is the newest collection of Indran's own poems. Recently published is Blue Window (Ventana Azul), translated by Jennifer Rathbun.(Dialogos Books). In 2020, Indran produced a “world" record by publishing three new poetry books written in three languages: The Migrant States (Hanging Loose Press, New York), Sur l'île nostalgique (L’Harmattan, Paris) and Lírica a tiempo (Mesa Redonda, Lima). He writes in English, Spanish, French, Portuguese, Haitian Creole and has twenty poetry books as well as a music album Rankont Dout. He edits The Beltway Poetry Quarterly and helps curate Ablucionistas. He won the Paterson Prize and received fellowships from The Foundation for the Contemporary Arts, New York Foundation for the Arts, US/Mexico Fund For Culture, and the MacDowell Colony. He hosts the Poetry Channel on YouTube and publishes poetry books with Sara Cahill Marron at Beltway Editions.

JORGE BERGOGLIO

by Mike Mesterton-Gibbons

Pope Francis on Saturday inducted 20 cardinals from around the world, choosing men who mostly agree with his vision of a more progressive and inclusive Church and influencing their choice of his eventual successor. —Reuters, August 27, 2022

Pope Francis [born Jorge Bergoglio] says he wouldn't live in the Vatican or return to his native Argentina if and when he ever retires. ABC News, July 12, 2022

Joe Ratzinger's a marvel. He gets ten

Off me for walking when his sun had set—

Retiring from his job as pontiff when

God told him he was past it—though he'd get

Eleven if the saintly fellow would

Be called, not Benedict, but Joe the Pope

Emeritus, and twelve if Joseph could

Remember his white cassocks are a nope!...

Go back to Argentina, or be found

On Vatican estates, if I step down?

Good heavens, no! Don't let me hang around,

Let Jorge hold confessions in the town

If he retires... But I'm not going yet—

Or you'll get some hardliner I'll regret!

Mike Mesterton-Gibbons is a Professor Emeritus at Florida State University who has returned to live in his native England. His acrostic sonnets have appeared in Autumn Sky Poetry Daily, Better Than Starbucks, the Creativity Webzine, Current Conservation, the Daily Mail, the Ekphrastic Review, Grand Little Things, Light, Lighten Up Online, The New Verse News, Oddball Magazine, Rat’s Ass Review, the Satirist, The Washington Post, and WestWard Quarterly.

ON DUTY

by Pam Davenport

Celeste Ayala: “Police officer who breastfed ‘smelly and dirty’ malnourished baby is PROMOTED for incredible gesture” —The Mirror (UK) 23 August 2018

Headline says dirty
though I don’t see dirty,
I see baby,
I see lines in Celeste’s brow
between her dark eyes above shadows––
for she is a mother.
Baby is dark and pure,
latched fast onto a policewoman’s
creamy bursting breast.
Hungry and malnourished,
we grasp this picture.
We lie in filth,
cockroaches burrow into our ears,
rats gnaw our limp arms,
none of our mothers want this.
A TV station displays the wrong
soul singer, may think all babies
are the same if unclean.
All babies are the same.
All babies are exactly different.
It is hard to latch onto anything,
so much we cannot grasp,
yet this baby knows what to do.
Celeste knows what to do.



Pam Davenport dreams of being a cowboy. Or cowgirl. Luckily, she lives in Arizona. Sadly, she is too old. Her poems have been published in Nimrod, Tinderbox, Poetry of the American Southwest, Chiron, Snapdragon, Rougarou, Pittsburgh Poetry Review, Four Chambers and Bared: An Anthology of Bras and Breasts.

BY THE RIVER

by Jan Steckel

“Happy is he who takes your little ones

and dashes them against the rocks.”

—Psalm 137:9

By the waters of the Rio Grande
our hands were cuffed,
our children taken.

We didn’t know in Bohemia’s Terezin,
Theresienstadt was a model camp.
Propaganda film: a Jewish orchestra
before it went up in smoke.

We’d heard Argentina
stole babies for barren
military couples, dropped mothers
from helicopters into the sea.

Tornillo in the Texas desert:
white tents pitched overnight.
Drone-photo of boys marched in lines.
Journalists not allowed inside.

In jail I got a receipt
for my wallet, but none for my son.
By the Rio Grande,
I lay down and wept.


Jan Steckel's poetry book The Horizontal Poet (Zeitgeist Press, 2011) won a 2012 Lambda Literary Award. Her fiction chapbook Mixing Tracks (Gertrude Press, 2009) and poetry chapbook The Underwater Hospital (Zeitgeist Press, 2006) also won awards. Her fiction and poetry have appeared in Scholastic Magazine, Yale Medicine, Bellevue Literary Review, Canary, Assaracus, and elsewhere. Her work was nominated three times each for the Pushcart and Sundress Best of the Net anthologies, won the Goodreads Poetry Contest three times, and earned various other awards.

THE DISAPPEARED

by B.Z. Niditch

New Pope Tied Up in Argentina's 'Dirty War' Debate
--AP,  March 14, 2013
Image: Jorge Bergoglio, Prepósito Provincial, en 1976. Image source: EstrellaDigital

                  for Pablo Neruda

Where are they
the children
the lost
those living in memory
in our solitude
those without strength
who march with us
in solidarity
who sing with us
toil with us
write on walls
all over the world with us
in prisons
with us
forever
clinging to a future
of the disappeared
and dispossessed
of the earth.


B.Z. Niditch is a poet, playwright, fiction writer and teacher. His work is widely published in journals and magazines throughout the world, including Columbia: A Magazine of Poetry and Art, The Literary Review, Denver Quarterly, Hawaii Review, Le Guepard (France), Kadmos (France), Prism International, Jejune (Czech Republic), Leopold Bloom (Budapest), Antioch Review, and Prairie Schooner.  He lives in Brookline, Massachusetts.