THE LEAST OF WHAT WE DO

by Pilar Saavedra-Vela

 

Vusala Yusifova and her daughter, Inji, asylum seekers from Azerbaijan, cutting a client’s hair in Monteverde, Costa Rica. Photograph by César Rodríguez.

 

Trump Deported Them. A Costa Rican Mountain Town Took Them In. —The New York Times, April 16, 2026
 

 

Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me. —Matthew 25:31-46
 
 

The cicadas have been silenced
by the chill of the oncoming night
 
On the highway, under a tree,
cardboard  is home  to a warm body
 
The cloud village of Monteverde
welcomes  deported families
 
from Russia and Azerbaijan who sought
asylum in America
 
One Russian witnessed  election cheating
another  man protested in Azerbaijan
 
Imagine being denied American
solidarity, shown instead a boot
 
all the way to  Costa Rican limbo
to find help among  the Quakers
 
Korean war objectors
who settled  a mountain top
 
The poet’s song has been silenced
 by the chill of the oncoming night
 
The tired, poor yearning masses
cradled by the foreigners as their own.


Pilar Saavedra-Vela is a student of poetry, painting, and acting, former editor and translator.  Born in Colombia, she grew up in the US  and now lives in Costa Rica. Pilar's poetry has been published in Passagers and The New Verse News.

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. 

A HEARTBEAT DISCOVERED

by David Chorlton

Hyalinobatrachium dianae

         

A frog nobody knew existed
appeared among the raindrops
in the foothills sloping down
toward the Caribbean.
It had been there all along,
as the Golden toad was dying,
as the Harlequin toad was losing
its forest, and while ultraviolet light
washed into the brightly
colored skins of tree frogs
and dart frogs, any one of which
would barely register
on the scale that weighs losses
until it becomes the last
and its call no longer
brings the nights to life.
The glassfrog is an inch of green
when it wraps its toes around
a narrow stem, and seen
from underneath, its heart
is visible through the transparent
skin, transmitting a signal back
up to the stars.


David Chorlton was born in Austria, grew up in Manchester, England, and lived for several years in Vienna before moving to Phoenix in 1978. In September, 2015, he will participate as a poet in the Fires of Change exhibition at the Coconino Center for the Arts in Flagstaff (Sponsored by the Southwest Fire Science Consortium, the Landscape Conservation Initiative, and the National Endowment for the Arts.)