LEARNING HER ABCs

by Madlynn Haber

A tiny girl, with sweet face, gentle features,

soft voice, recites her ABCs for me.

She learned them from an older, bolder cousin. 

The speech is hard for my aged ears to decipher. 

Mingled languages, English, Spanish, baby talk, 

an imitation of the elder cousin’s careful pronunciation. 

She smiles shyly, appreciating my attentive listening 

without noticing my lack of comprehension.

Her mother was not deported today.

 

The mother showed up at the immigration center 

with the little girl in her arms. The fearful father 

stayed home. Bail money collected by well-meaning 

neighbors filled her pockets, just in case.

Sighs of relief as she returns with a four-month reprieve. 

The little one will know her letters and some numbers, 

in English, the language of the only home 

she's ever known, by the time she escorts her mother 

to the immigration office again in July.

Madlynn Haber is the author of Seasons of Sorrow and Joy (Metaphysical Fox Press, 2025). She lives in a cohousing community in Northampton, Massachusetts.Her writing has been published in many literary journals and anthologies including, Eunoia Review, Months to Years, Orenaug Mountain Poetry Journal, Bright Flash Literary Review, Sheila-Na-Gig and The Metaworker Literary Magazine.

CANADIAN DEATHS IN THE BOER WAR

Written after reading about the North Koreans who have been killed, wounded, or captured fighting in Ukraine for Russia

by Steve Hellyard Swartz

In Quebec City there's a monument to Canadian soldiers killed in action during the Boer War in South Africa from 1899 to 1902

Whenever I saw that little memorial I thought about what it must have been like to be a young French Canadian man conscripted into service,

You're on a boat with others trying to be brave

And it's not that hard, still on the boat, there are card games and smokes and the food is bad but you're young and it's an adventure

You don't love that most of your fellow soldiers aren't from Quebec and speak English but they seem okay and there are enough French-speakers so you pretty much know what's going on

And then you get there

Which is where exactly?

Where are we?

No one is exactly sure what they call the place where  you are

You get off the boat and the sign isn't what you recognize as French or English.

Someone tells you it's Dutch, or what the white people in this place speak, which comes from Dutch

You want to know how the hell the Dutch got involved in all this but no one has time to tell you

Red-faced men are barking in English for everybody to do something

You look around and do what everybody else is doing

The red-faced man and other red-faced men are pointing and screaming for you to March!

You march

Some of you are smiling and when you ask why you're told it's better than being on that fucking boat, at least this is something, at least we're doing what we're here to do

Which is what? And where are we? 

Nobody knows for sure but at least it's not nothing

You get on a train and it's warm

Windows are opened

Cigarettes are passed around, someone has a bottle but it's empty before you can get it

The train rolls on forever

You look out the window and it looks like a lot of nothing

Is this what they're fighting over? And who is this "they" anyway?

It's the fucking British, it's not the French, that much you know.

So who is it then - the British against the Dutch? Or what passes for Dutch out here? What passes for British?

You wonder if you pass for British? You think about how your parents and grandparents, your aunts and uncles, your sister and brother, would not be happy with you passing for British

So why are you here? You look at the other soldiers laughing, smoking, passing around another bottle.

You know that the bottle will be empty before it reaches you

This is bullshit you think

Why the fuck am I here?

Somebody offers you a cigarette and you take it

An English-speaker offers you the bottle with one swig left,

You take it, you smile, he lights your smoke.

You think about that as you lie on the field later that day

You think about his nice smile and how he flicked the match against his thumb

You'd die for a smoke right now, you'd die for a swig

You close your eyes and feel the African sun hot on your face,

You hear someone yelling but you don't know these words

You don't want to die like this, this is no way to die

So you open your eyes to see the one thing you understand

You open your eyes and stare at the sun.

Steve Hellyard Swartz's movie Never Leave Nevada opened at the Sundance Film Festival thirty-five years ago this week. He is an award-winning poet, filmmaker, movie critic, and the author of a new memoir The Last Jewish Mother Joke.

WRITTEN ON THE FOURTH OF JULY

by Richard Garcia

Image source: The Navage Patch

On this day I say Happy birthday Mom. She died a long time ago. But she was always dying. You'd say Good morning Mom, how are you? I'm dying. she would say. What's for dinner? You'd ask. I'm dying, she would answer. She died so much that when she did die we hardly noticed. Of course, she had a long life since she was born a long time ago. She was the cleaning lady at The Continental Congress in Philly in 1776. She did such a good job cleaning up, all the dirt and dust and ashes and spittoons and bathrooms, that the founding fathers gave all their slaves that were working the concessions and greeting the carriages and grooming the horses and cleaning up, their freedom. My mother was from Mexico and much cheaper than the slaves, and all they had to do was feed her pancakes, which she thought were Yankee tortillas. The founding fathers were so happy with my mother's work that they named Independence Day for her birthday, the Fourth of July. The slaves that had been freed that day were really spies for the English. They were happy too and went back to England and became butlers and grooms and were paid for their work, not a lot but the English had good pancakes and lodging and the workers had insurance and a retirement plan.

Richard Garcia is the author of The Other Odyssey from Dream Horse Press, The Chair from BOA, and Porridge from Press 53. His poems appear in many journals, including The Georgia Review, Poetry and Ploughshares. 

THE PARK CLOSES AT DUSK

by CL Bledsoe & Michael Gushue

The problem is bears in the classroom.
The problem is bears who don't know
which utensil is for the pâté, which
is for olives.
The problem is that I'm right.
The problem is our tax dollars at work.
Ask all the questions you want. Questions are free.
Answers require donations.
The problem is bears who don't speak proper English.
The problem is bears stealing jobs.
The problem is union bears.
The problem is the lack of bear vouchers.
Bears should be left up to the states,
the largest donors.
Bears eating pâté. Bears who can spell their government
representatives' names and use a touch-tone phone.
The problem is bears who don't know how to stitch
their own wounds.
The problem is bears on death panels,
bears running internment camps.
The problem is bears as Uber drivers.
Bears want to take away our pâté knives.
The problem is bears don't eat pâté
and the ones who do don't vote.
The problem is bears taking our guns and making them into backscratchers.
Russian bears who've invaded our classrooms after the arctic ice melted.
The problem is what's going on behind the bears' backs
while we're watching their teeth.

CL Bledsoe is the assistant editor for The Dead Mule and author of fourteen books, most recently the poetry collection Trashcans in Love. He lives in northern Virginia with his daughter.

Michael Gushue is co-founder with Dan Vera of Poetry Mutual and Poetry Mutual Press. He co-curates the intermittent reading series Poetry at the Watergate with Deborah Ager. His chapbooks are Gathering Down Women, Conrad, and Pachinko Mouth. He lives Washington, D.C.