ELECTION DAY

by Pilar Saavedra-Vela

“Costa Rica’s Boring Elections Are a Model for the World.” —Foreign Policy, February 4, 2022

The two leading candidates to emerge from a large field reflect voters’ concerns about economic malaise and corruption, but there’s little sign of the upheaval seen in other regional elections. Costa Rica’s president will be decided in a runoff  [on April 3] after none of the record twenty-five candidates managed to secure enough votes to win during the February 6 election. —Council on Foreign Relations, February 10, 2022

Distant car horns

blare in three-beat compass,

announcing that voting  

is fully in swing,

like a Sunday party

in Democracy Plaza,

in San José, in all Costa Rica.

 

Bananas still leave here in ships

to the North and Europe.

Still a banana republic,

that pejorative qualifier

which, from northern heights

of civilization, disdained

Central America.

 

But here nobody is rushing

the Congress building

or maiming its guards.

No military parades,

no goosesteps, no gallows,

no guns firing in the air.

It’s a party out there

 

for 25 candidates

who know it’s not certainty

but a prayer

that the people will

let them lead.

Even in pandemic,

it’s a festival out there

 

on a Sunday,

no alcohol allowed,

but lots of flags, a spree

of blue, yellow, red, green

balloons,  

horn-blowing,

sun. 

Pilar Saavedra-Vela has lived in Costa Rica for almost 34 years. Born in Colombia, she grew up in the DC area, to where she returns almost every year. She is a translator and hotel owner who writes poetry since 2006. One of her poems was published in Passager in 2020. 

AT THE TEXAS BORDER CROSSING

by Wendy Hoffman





Justice is a pebble under the rug you trip over,
a slipped stitch on embroidery,
mail that fails to be delivered.

I want to give my kids life
so the gangs won’t rape
or kill them,
so we can buy food, not steal.

Does that make me a criminal?
It makes me unwanted.
I didn’t think we’d make it to the border
but we did, thirsty, filthy.

I thought the children would faint,
I carried the youngest.
Asylum: that was for the old days.

The stiff legged officers pace like dictators.
Some enjoy, some hate, their job.
All my children severed from my spine,

its sound like a building demolished.
Our pleading cries carry no weight,
our filled lungs don’t matter.

Will I hug empty air for the rest of my life?
I don’t know where they took my children,
I may never feel or smell them again.
The space between us is deeper than a grave.

How can people in uniforms rip out my soul?
This theft will be engraved in my children’s minds forever.
First starvation, then murder of our bond.
They send me home alone.

What will they do with my children,
who cares about them?
Asylum: a dream from the past,
democracy doesn’t exist.

The gangs are restless,
they know I am here,
they prowl.

Wendy Hoffman is a retired social worker. Karnac Books, London, published her memoirs in 2014 and 2015, and a co-authored book of essays, in 2017. Her books are now with Aeon Publishers in England and Routlege in New York. Her first book of poetry was published in 2016. A new memoir is forthcoming. She has a MFA in creative writing and lives on the Olympic Peninsula with her dog.

SALVADORIAN SAW

by David Radavich

Image source: The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints

How best to
sacrifice a child?

Hand him over
to gang-leaders’ guns?
Pay for blood
in coinage?

Or give him to
government forces
in a simple box
I nailed myself?

Open her body
before the cathedral
with a scythe?

Or go to the U.S.
and shiver in a cage
without food
or shower or a bed?

Solomon, tell me
how to divide
this child

so her soul
can sing tomorrow.

David Radavich's latest book is America Abroad: An Epic of Discovery (2019), companion volume to his earlier America Bound: An Epic for Our Time (2007).  Other recent poetry collections are Middle-East Mezze (2011) and The Countries We Live In (2014).  He has served as president of the Thomas Wolfe Society, Charlotte Writers' Club, and North Carolina Poetry Society and currently administers the Gilbert-Chappell Distinguished Poet Series.

AFTER HEARING OF ANOTHER MIGRANT CARAVAN HEADING FOR THE U.S.

by Steve Dieffenbacher

A group of 376 Central Americans was arrested in southwest Arizona, the vast majority of them families who dug short, shallow holes under a barrier to cross the border, authorities said Friday. The group dug under a steel barrier in seven spots about 10 miles east of a border crossing in San Luis and made no effort to elude immigration agents. They included 176 children. The unusually large group was almost entirely from Guatemala. They were taken to Yuma after entering the country Monday. —KTLA, January 18, 2019

For years in our childhood
              we came upon them
in barrancas and bajadas,
              curiosity in our hearts,
their huts huddled
              in foliage.
streams running below
              with rocks
to promises of water,
              shelters
thatched on land
              they’d never own,
children staring,
              afraid,
wearing only a shirt.
              Behind them, always
a dirt floor under bare
              walls,
crude mats and pots,
              an emptiness
no rapist or killer would touch.
              On buses
the women sat stone-faced
              with baskets,
black beans and plantains to sell,
              men outside
bent over bundles of sticks
              faces in shadow.
Now the people stretch north
              from fear to fear,
faith lost in the known places
              they never
wanted to leave behind
               just to live.

Steve Dieffenbacher lived in Latin American for more than a dozen years during his childhood, most of them in Central America. His full-length book of poems The Sky Is a Bird of Sorrow was published by Wordcraft of Oregon in 2012. The collection won a ForeWord Reviews Bronze Award for poetry, and a poem in the book, “Night Singer, Chaco Canyon, New Mexico,” was named a 2013 Spur Award poetry finalist by the Western Writers of America. He also has three chapbooks: At the Boundary (2001), Universe of the Unsaid (2010), and Intimations (2018). He lives in Medford, Oregon.

SONG OF THE SEA: MEXICO 2018

by Donna Katzin

"Mexico town devastated by earthquake welcomes thousands from migrant caravan. Migrants from Central America are fleeing poverty and violence and are still weeks away from reaching the US." —The Guardian, October 30, 2018. Photo: Central Americans fill their water bottles with juice while waiting in line to receive donated food in Niltepec, Oaxaca. Photograph: Rebecca Blackwell/AP via The Guardian.

In your unfailing love you will lead

    the people you have redeemed.

In your strength you will guide them

    to your holy dwelling.

—Exodus, 15.1

A human river,
they come in shirts and sandals,                           
children holding their hands, 
mochilas bearing their only belongings.                                           

They come in shirts and sandals,                           
hunger in their hearts,
mochilas bearing their only belongings,                                             
turn their backs on beatings, gunshots in the night.

Hunger in their hearts,
they trudge through wilderness,
turn their backs on beatings, gunshots in the night --
leave the land that gave them life.                     

They trudge through wilderness,         
envisioning a Promised Land,
leave the land that gave them life.
Together they cry out to their god.                                       

Envisioning a Promised Land
like passengers of the St. Louis,
together they cry out to their god
when the border slams shut.                                                 

Like passengers of the St. Louis,           
refusing to turn back                   
when the border slams shut,
they surge in search of a miracle.                                                                         

Refusing to turn back,
a human river,
they surge in search of a miracle,
children holding their hands.

                                                                                             

Donna Katzin is the founding executive director of Shared Interest, a fund that mobilizes the human and financial resources of low-income communities of color in South and Southern Africa.  A board member of Community Change in the U.S., and co-coordinator of Tipitapa Partners working in Nicaragua, she has written extensively about South Africa, community development and impact investing.  Published in journals and sites including TheNewVerse.News and The Mom Egg, she is the author of With the Hands, a book of poems and photographs about post-apartheid South Africa’s process of giving birth to itself.

A ROCK IS NOT A RIFLE

by Akua Lezli Hope

A rock is not a rifle
a jackass is not a genius
hysterical raving is not fact
might is not right

a caravan is not an invasion
a child is not a commodity
a refugee is not refuse
a rock is not a rifle

resentment is not democracy
fear is not strength
denial is not affirmation
a rock is not a rifle

commitment is not a joke
accords are not accidents
science is not opinion
a rock is not a rifle

abuse is not a right
hate is not a right
murder is not a right
a rock is not a rifle

a rock is not a rifle
though you be goliath
and we are david
a rock is not a rifle

Akua Lezli Hope is a creator who uses sound, words, fiber, glass, handmade paper and wire to create poems, patterns, stories, music, adornments, sculpture and peace whenever possible. She has published 125 crochet designs. Her new Word Works poetry collection Them Gone is now available.

INTOLERANCE DEGREE ZERO: A LETTER FROM HOMELAND SECURITY, THE US ATTORNEY GENERAL, AND THE POTUS

by Roxanne Lynn Doty

As the White House faces court orders to reunite families separated at the border, immigrant children as young as three years old are being ordered into court for their own deportation proceedings, according to attorneys in Texas, California and Washington, D.C. —The Texas Tribune, June 27, 2018

Dear Migrants and Asylum Seekers,

     We are implementing policies to keep our homeland
safe from your scattered bones and disobedient
dreams that traverse la linea between our air and yours.
We have executive orders, vacant Walmarts
and Bible verses on our side.  In the name of sovereignty,
we will send vultures to swoop heavy over the hearts
of your children, seal loopholes in arid scratches of earth
with blood from blisters on your feet. We will erase
your name and bury your destiny in an open grave
on the migrant trail as we watch the sky rain dust
from skeletons of all the crossers we have funneled
into the killing fields of the Sonoran, Mohave
and Chihuahuan Deserts. And if you emerge
from these wastelands, we will warehouse your sons
and daughters behind the stripes of our flag,
as sludge spills from the sewers of our mouths.
God bless America, we are not a sanctuary,
we do not do body counts, and we do not keep track
of where we send your babies.

Roxanne Lynn Doty lives in Tempe, Arizona. Her short stories and poems have appeared in Forge, I70 Review, Soundings Review, Four Chambers Literary Magazine, Lascaux Review, Lunaris Review, Journal of Microliterature, TheNewVerse.News, Ocotillo Review, and are forthcoming in Saranac Review, Gateway Review, and Reunion—The Dallas Review. Two of her short stories were finalists in the 2012 and 2014 New Letters Alexander Patterson Cappon Prize for Fiction, and the editor of Lascaux Review nominated one of her stories for the 2015 Million Writers Award.

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.

OTHER SIDE GHAZAL

by Judith Terzi




The quinceañera, the college graduation. You won't be here.
For your parents' fiftieth. Sorry, you won't be traveling here.

Deported for one ounce of grass. You rode the big bus twice.
You wander dreamless south of the border. You won't be here.

Your mother––sin papeles. Twenty years of tucking corners.
Ten more nurturing others' kids. She can't go there, she's here.

Your father––paperless––mower of grass, nurturer of crops.
Builder of bookcases, family, walls. Thirty years of here.

No re-entry to the USA. No entry. Stay in Aleppo, Mosul.
Trek to Gaza City, Jordan, Istanbul. No welcome mat here.

Endure the tarp of tents, bitterness in your husband's glance.
Let dust on your wife's hijab thicken. You can't come here.

Another quiet cycle through your prayer beads––misbaha.
Kiss weariness from your children's smiles. Not allowed here.

We're sorry our gods have seized the heart of this matter.
They say our country may be great again. You won't be here.

Judith Terzi's poetry has appeared in a wide variety of journals and anthologies including Caesura, Malala: Poems for Malala Yousafzai, Raintown Review, Spillway, Unsplendid, and Wide Awake: The Poets of Los Angeles and Beyond. If You Spot Your Brother Floating By is her most recent chapbook from Kattywompus Press. Her poems have been nominated for Best of the Net and Web.

MIGRANT

by Frank De Canio





Duress held captive by her will,
she held him thrashing in a boat
then waded through the waves and chill
that kept his hardened heart afloat.
She then assayed the Rio Grande,
less émigré in sore distress
than athlete in a marathon.
Her mettle hammered out US
of A above the custom house
across the line from Mexico.
Nor would the trials still pending douse
the girl’s triumphant afterglow
at having weathered storm and stress.
A tough as leather pioneer,
she trumpeted resourcefulness
to claim her valor’s broad frontier.

Born & bred in New Jersey, Frank De Canio works in New York. Shakespeare is his consolation, writing his hobby.

SNEAKING ACROSS THE BORDER

by Linda Lerner

The author's father's family.

He never spoke of what it was like
those three years in Amsterdam
waiting to get to America

and I never asked….
I heard about it from her, not him

he & I lived in separate countries;
there was no crossing over, not then;
day after day I read about those thousands
of migrant children…. many 17 and younger…

and I hear my mother’s voice from
before I was ready to listen, only 17 when his father
forced him to join a group of youths
fleeing Russian pogroms…

In an album she left me are photos of
the family he’d never see again…

using their story I sneak across the border;
among the children coming thru Mexico,
Central America, some drowning or getting shot

I see that Russian boy
standing with others who made it here
forced to explain  WHY  what
he’ll be asking himself his whole life


A chapbook of Linda Lerner’s poems using nursery rhymes as a taking off place Ding Dong The Bell Pussy in the Well, illustrated by Donna Kerness was published by Lummox Press, in Feb. 2014. Her next full length collection Yes, the Ducks Were Real will be published by New York Quarterly books in Fall 2014.

UNACCOMPANIED MINORS

by Phyllis Wax

Detainees sleep in a holding cell at a U.S. Customs and Border Protection processing facility in Brownsville, Texas June 18, 2014.
--REUTERS/Eric Gay/Pool 

fifty thousand in less than a year
scarred, scared
exhausted
stomachs gnawing

to escape violence
there’s no hiding from at home,
in the neck between the Americas,
surviving the trek
through endless Mexico
and now

they sleep on a warehouse floor
in Nogales
sprawled in
the myriad positions
children sleep in—
snuggled to a sibling
arm or leg
overlapping
flopped supine, mouth agape—
detainees of a resistant state

The soft sighs of their breathing            
warm the cold cement they lie on

while lawmakers want to
send in the National Guard

Phyllis Wax muses on the news and politics from a bluff overlooking Lake Michigan in Milwaukee, WI.  She's been widely published, recently in The Widows' Handbook:  Poetic Reflections on Grief and Survival from Kent State University Press.  When she's not writing you might find her escorting at a local women's clinic.