ALL MY AUNTIES WERE THIRD WORLD WOMEN

by Vinay Krishnan

 

when you fly international, one of the TSA’s 

prohibited travel items is solidarity for the world’s 

oppressed. don’t put solidarity in your luggage. you 

can’t leave with that. you definitely can’t come home with 

that. at customs, we need an itemized list of any 

new truths you have in your bags that we’ve been 

hiding from you here in America. empty your 

pockets and prove to me you’re not carrying a 

trinket that connects you to another man’s struggle. 

take off your shoes and socks and place your 

brown feet on this white floor as a reminder. a 

reminder that every border crossing is a strip 

search and a cudgel, distilling you into something 

that fits more easily into an overhead compartment 

or a cage or a grave.

but today I had to laugh at that. because all my 

aunties were third world women. and now we're 

running it back, old and new blessings. all my 

aunties were third world women. all my aunties 

were third world women.

Vinay Krishnan is a writer and community organizer. His poetry has appeared in Cordite Poetry Review, his fiction has appeared in Barren Magazine, and his non-fiction has appeared in SLAM Magazine.

IF THIS WERE A SAM ALITO POEM

by Dick Westheimer

Learn to predict a fire with unerring precision.

Then burn down the house to fulfill the prediction.

—Czeslaw Milsoz

If this were a Sam Alito poem,  it would be written in tidy couplets, matched in beat and time. It would forget that words are born from grunts and battle cries, that swords decide which terms can be used and which are taboo, that the right to cleave your neighbor with a steel blade is her duty to bear Samuel’s baby, the one he so loves, the one that he is willing to render in tersets and turds, to bang and clang the lines into refrigerator magnets with the only words being “life” and “thoughts” and “and” and “prayers.”

If this were an Amy Coney Barrett poem, The First Word In Each Line Would Be  Capitalized, the lines themselves would neatly rhyme, would chime with the rhythm of the Sainted Ones, entrain with the iambs of a military parade—with goose-stepping Aunties’ heads and staffs held high, saluting to the the crowd of Commander’s wives in their hues of blue, and to the Guardians of the Right who know a thing or two about the bump and mad grind, about how we’re all inclined to naughty deeds with the lights turned off with a glory hole chemise cagoule between a woman and the beasts with their hairy parts and the beat of steeple-hatted bigots stomping time on courthouse floorboards.

If this were a Clarence Thomas poem, the meter will be trochee, a hammer hammer hammer double time.  It would be a sestina cycling lines of the before times when men were men and women were not, when guns were muskets and books were sewn with linen thread, when Coke cans shed the hair of the dog that bit us all, when what was written in the age of powdered wigs was wise and there would be a crowning of a New King who’d reign over a land where men who held hands with men were melted down into guns anointed by boys who’d hold lead to the heads of women great with child.

And if this were my poem, the verse would be blank, the words mute, the letters scattered across the page. The white space would be smudged with ash, the margins smudged with blood and pocked with powder burns. The verse would exercise its right to remain silent, cuffed to a chair, pregnant, with despair.

Dick Westheimer  has—with his wife and writing companion Debbie—lived on their plot of land in rural southwest Ohio for over 40 years. His most recent poems have recently appeared or are upcoming in Rattle, Paterson Review, Chautauqua Review, RiseUp Review, Ekphrastic Review, Minyan, Gyroscope Review, and Cutthroat.