THE AMERICAN DREAM

by Alan Catlin

Born in Wichita, Kansas, fine art photographer Tom Kiefer was raised primarily in the Seattle area and worked in Los Angeles as a graphic designer. Kiefer moved to Ajo, Arizona in December 2001 to fully develop and concentrate his efforts in studying and photographing the urban and rural landscape and the cultural infrastructure. In 2015 Kiefer was included in LensCulture's top 50 emerging photographers and Photolucida's top 50 Critical Mass. His ongoing work “El Sueño Americano” (the American Dream) has been featured in news publications nationally and internationally. 

“Don’t let no one take your hope or dreams away.”

            —Tom Kiefer, photographer, assembler

Dispossessed items
at the Border made into
Art:

Duct tape re-enforced water
bottles used as canteens

One worn Mickey Mouse sweater
child sized 2017

One baby shoe 2018

A montage of hair brushes
and combs fitted into a near-
perfect square pattern 2017

A tangle of shoelaces, blue
like a nest of vipers,
conqueror worms 2017

50 potentially lethal,
non-essential toothbrushes,
in patriotic colors: red, white and blue
assembled as USA USA USA 2019


Alan Catlin has published dozens of chapbooks and full-length books, most recently the chapbook Three Farmers on the Way to a Dance (Presa Press), a series of ekphrastic poems responding to the work of German photographer August Sander who did portraits of Germans before, during, and after both World Wars.

STAGING AREA

by Mark Danowsky

News of another shooting—

This time folks in a Walmart in El Paso are unlucky

I listen to the hourly recap while I wrap my ankle—seems I rolled it
in the process of loading the U-Haul

Tomorrow I’ll drive the 15’ truck 300 miles from West Virginia to almost safe
suburbs 9 miles outside Philadelphia

9 miles is the space I’ve been driving strangers all over this mad college town
more than a year now

I’ll drive strangers in the new space, too, though I hope to avoid airport staging
in spite of the possibility for decent fares

While packing, I called the $20 Walmart coffee table and the $8 Walmart shoe rack
my “staging area”

We carried that staging area to the trash earlier

Now on NPR they’re talking about a staging area outside Walmart—
families trying to find each other after the terror
forced upon them by an active shooter

I don’t know if they’re still putting children in cages at our southern border but
the images I’m conjuring are horrific enough

A man with a gun enters a public space to disrupt as many lives as he can

Another man with a gun takes a child from his father’s arms because
he says the father failed to properly change a diaper on their endless journey

Remember when we started to build that bridge to nowhere? It’s hard
to think badly of a bridge when for years now there’s been so much talk of walls

After unloading the U-Haul at the new place I’m going to get a few necessities
at the local Walmart

I’m going to go because America gets back on the horse
even if we forget what caused us to fall

I’m going to go to Walmart because it can’t be like Aurora
when the cashier at the A-Plus says I look a little like the shooter and I don’t
enter a movie theater for the next four years

I’m going to go to Walmart because sometimes
going to Walmart isn’t about class or flag-waving or quality or luxury

Sometimes Walmart means America and we just have to nod and take a knee

Mark Danowsky is a writer from Philadelphia and author of the poetry collection As Falls Trees (NightBallet Press, 2018). His poems have appeared in Eunoia Review, Gargoyle, The Healing Muse, Kestrel, North Dakota Quarterly, and elsewhere. He’s Managing Editor for the Schuylkill Valley Journal.

MEMORY OF PRAYER

by Christopher Woods

From left: Felipe Gomez Alonzo, Carlos Gregorio Hernandez Vasquez and Jakelin Caal Maquin are three of the children who have died in the custody of U.S. Customs and Border Protection. Family photos via NBC News. “A group of doctors from Harvard and Johns Hopkins has urged Congress to investigate the deaths of six migrant children who were held in government custody after crossing the southern border in the past year, warning that “poor conditions” at U.S. facilities are increasing the risk of spreading deadly infectious diseases, especially the flu. The doctors, who wrote to Congress on Thursday, said autopsy reports show that at least three of the children—ages 2, 6 and 16—died in part as a result of having the flu, a far higher incidence of such deaths than across the general population. Child flu deaths are rare, the doctors said, and should be preventable.” —The Washington Post, August 1, 2019

for the American concentration camp dead

Children know so little
about prayer.
But they have seen
and felt
the devil's breath,
and how very rare it is
for angels to come
down to them
to rescue their bodies
from the devil's work.

Pray for them, won't you?
Even if prayer seems a forgotten tongue,
if supplication is just another word
on Dictionary.com.
Someone, somewhere
Might hear
Come down from on high
To make things right.
To cast out the monsters
That took our prayers away.

Christopher Woods has published a novel, The Dream Patch; a prose collection, Under A Riverbed Sky; and a book of stage monologues for actors, Heart Speak. His photographs can be seen in his gallery. His photography prompt book for writers From Vision To Text is forthcoming from Propertius Press.

COLORING

by Laura Lee Washburn

This drawing is part of an exhibition in Tucson, AZ of original watercolors and other artworks by kids whose families have fled to the U.S. seeking asylum. Casa Alitas operates a refugee shelter in a former Benedictine Monastery and offers art-making classes to traumatized kids released from detention.

“It’s not what you look at that matters,

  it’s what you see.”

—Henry David Thoreau

In the blue pool with jogging women
every morning this month I’ve seen
in distant tree yellow busted balloon.

I have ridden the packed dirt
on a brown three-speed bike
almost into long black snake.

I have been to the marsh
where green leaves reflect
from brown tannin waters.
I will go there again.

I have felt unease, eaten
too much sugar, sagged
at the loneliness of bad friendships.

I’ve helped light one hundred and forty candles
after dark, listened to testimony, heard
the names of six dead migrant children:

Darlyn, Jakelin, Felipe, Juanito, Wilmer, Carlos.
I’ve read the judicial arguments on soap
and sleep, toothpaste, blankets.

When the green leaves blow,
I watch through bamboo blinds,
live action but dim impressions of bright.

I have driven in blind white
sun on the turnpike’s upward curve
and made it south enough to see again.

I have driven twenty in storm
shocking white water rains
when the pea-sized summer hail
begins to tap.
I have not turned
around at the lake in the road.
 —I have judged and been judged—

Stupid people    this local woman
hosted a vigil because of “images” she saw.
How does she know [How does she know?]
the images are really detention centers?
    people who serve the DARK!
    scum invading      disease and violence
our president taking down the evil
Stop believing or search for the truth
everything is really a lie!

Laura Lee Washburn has taught how to tell creditable sources from biased sources, has never been held in a cell, and donates her time to a Southeast Kansas organization that helps women in poverty resolve crises.

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.

ABECEDARIO

by German Dario

“Foster Care or Whatever” by Pia Guerra at The Nib

todos los nombres

child a
came from central american country x
wearing dust
from three countries
and the sweat of his ancestors

child b
came from central American country z

           we think

she was too young to speak
but the twig
she had in place
of the left arm
on her doll
is from a tree
that grows in country z

child c
was just a foot and chancla
wrapped in a serape

child d
was raped
          repeatedly
wants to die
but crossed a line
and got picked up

child e
is running
from
a new family
a gang that tattooed
their brand
on virgin skin
and killed the mom

child f
had a good
hardworking clan
but they were taken
in a van
and closed doors
don't explain
   anything

child g's clothes were on child h

I
           do nothing

child m and n
might be related
by blood
if not by blood
by abuse
from a coyote
with candy
gun
and putrid
acid tongue

o
p
q
r
s

todos los nombres
now
all are safe
behind
fence link
dreamcatchers


German Dario, recently published at The Friday Influence and The Blue Collar Review, resides in Arizona.