DISQUIET OVER DISTANT MURDER

by Indran Amirthanayagam 

See also CFR reporting by Will Freeman

This disquiet, queasy floating gut, 

comes from wondering why 

an unmarked, unregistered 

plane lands in a military strip 

of an Ecuadorian airport, 

with an unknown number 

of crew members, takes off 

then drops drones 

on a fishing boat near 

the Galapagos, killing 

several fishermen, sinking 

the boat, then capturing 

survivors who are flown 

to El Salvador and treated 

there as shipwreck victims.

Whose ship is wrecked? 

Who turned good evil, 

night day, justice execution? 

Orwell? Or is this the new 

every day in these 

United States which 

dispatched the plane 

that sentenced 

the fishermen 

to float in the sea 

until rescued by the same 

crew that set off 

the drones that punched 

their ship into

the deep.

Indran Amirthanayagam writes a Substack. He has just published Isla itinerante ( Editorial Apogeo, Peru, 2025) and White Space Sonnets ( Sarasavi publishers, Sri Lanka, 2025). His other publications include El bosque de deleites fratricidas ( RIL Editores), Seer (Hanging Loose Press),The Runner's Almanac (Spuyten Duyvil), Powèt Nan Pò A: Poet of the Port (Mad Hat), and Ten Thousand Steps Against the Tyrant (Broadstone Books). He is the translator of Kenia Cano’s Animal For The Eyes (Dialogos Books) and Origami: Selected Poems of Manuel Ulacia (Dialogos Books). He edits The Beltway Poetry Quarterly, hosts the Poetry Channel on YouTube, and publishes poetry books with Sara Cahill Marron at Beltway Editions.

SHOWING A DVD ON THE GALAPAGOS TO A NINTH GRADE CLASS

by Don Kingfisher Campbell

Some watch the projected video

of blue footed boobies

diving down like bombers

to feast on an unsuspecting school of fish

Others would rather stare

into their small lighted rectangles

to play a game, send messages

or simply check out their faces

The British narratress

twistedly intones the wonder

of sea lions snatching by the tail

swimming rock-colored iguanas

And what will become

of the fourteen-year-olds

who don’t care to take notes

on this predatory world

The gliding hawk seizes

the frantically running lizard

The bug-eyed orange crabs

pinch off pieces of wounded seagull

Are these students doomed

to be pushing paper, repairing roads

selling cars, hammering homes

stocking stores, serving plates

The volcanic islands themselves

are born in the ocean

live a few million years

sink slowly to die

Don Kingfisher Campbell’s poetry has recently been published in the anthologies Altadena Poetry Review, Like A Girl, Poems To F*ck To, San Pedro River Review, Attack of the Poems, Gutters & Alleyways, and Lummox #3; and in cyberspace on Toe Good Poetry, In-Flight Literary Magazine, Poetic Diversity, Where I Live-Silver Birch Press, One Sentence Poems, Cadence Collective, and Camel Saloon.

ARCHIPELAGO: GALAPAGOS

by Resa Mestel

Reclining land iguanas, the welcome committee,
footfalls ignored on primordial islands,
trails of Darwin pry the nests
of flightless cormorants, keeping house unvexed.
Blue-footed boobies on the move, magnificent frigates, no
Man O' War to us, oblivious banded penguins,
cool in the Humboldt current, somersault with baby
seals in nascent underwater playgrounds. Masked,
finned, ebullient I snorkel to a green sea
turtle, entreaty in tow.


Resa Mestel is a nurse, weaver, poet currently studying at The Hudson Valley Writer's Center. She lives in Briarcliff, NY.