MISSING

by Patricia M. Phillips-Batoma

For the Guthrie family

In the Sonoran desert 
a mother is missing 
and the world wonders 
who could do this. 
Her children on TV 
try to break through. 
The star sibling, 
with the made-for-TV smile, 
brighter than any screen, 
vast as a continent, 
breaks down. She sniffles. 
Her mouth twists 
in her small mortal face 
where crisscrossed lines 
read like a map 
of all Earth’s sorrows. 
So many know this disaster. 
They sit on the same couch 
as these three siblings, 
with family near 
and ordinary days out of reach. 
We are not built to endure 
the snatching away of goodness and light, 
of normal human people. 


Author's note: The lines in italics echo the first video put out by Savannah Guthrie and her two siblings.

Patricia Phillips-Batoma is a writer and teacher who lives in Illinois. She has published poems in Skylight 47, An Capall Dorcha, The New Verse News, Off Course, Plants and Poetry and Spilling Cocoa over Martin Amis.

STRAIGHT TALK FOR AMTRAK JOE

by Patricia Phillips-Batoma 

One of the photos Lunden Roberts posted on Instagram of her daughter during a trip to Washington.

After Maureen Dowd, “It’s Seven Grandkids, Mr. President,” The New York Times, July 8, 2023

Mr. President, for the love of God, learn to count to seven—
one boy, six girls—and include the one named Navy.
Be quick. You hold a ticket for the good old train to heaven.
 
You love to fist bump all of America’s little children,
except one who hopes you’ll call and waits so patiently.
Please, Joe, for God’s sake, learn to count to seven.
 
What’s more she’s cool. A true made-for-shades Biden.
Gift her your good name and wrap it in some empathy.
Snap to it, you hold a ticket for that good old train to heaven.
 
It’s embarrassing to have to give a President a lesson,
and hard truths voice themselves with such severity.
So, no more malarky, just count all the way to seven.
 
Once those pearlies close, you might sense some tension,
the sound of heart space, forever and forever empty.
Too late, the good old train pulls into the eternity of heaven.
 
Spare her the taunts, this awful earthly aggression.
Navy! Navy! Not a welcome baby!  So can you maybe,
Joseph Robinette Biden, count all the way to seven?
Even presidents hold a ticket for the good old train to heaven.

Patricia Phillips-Batoma is a writer and teacher who lives in Illinois. She has published poems in Skylight 47, An Capall Dorcha, The New Verse News, Off Course, and Spilling Cocoa over Martin Amis.

YOU BAN BOOKS, YOU BAN DRAG, KIDS ARE STILL IN BODY BAGS!

by Patricia Phillips-Batoma

“Neighbor is not a geographical term,

it is a moral concept.”

—Rabbi Yoachim Prinz

On Tuesday, my neighbor’s white magnolia scintillates against a beach blue sky. I wear shades to trek past farm fields and pines to vote in spring’s local elections. 

 

I hope to stem the tide of “back to basics” policies, fig leaves for fears—tax dollars spent on gender neutral bathrooms, light shed on our egregious system of chattel slavery, 

 

calls to address our cancer of white supremacy. These questions that refuse to fold themselves back inside the bottle are not our enemies. The universe calls us to travel along 

 

their twisting turning highways and open to the sacred space of meaning. I pass a small corner beauty shop where a flag flaps today at half mast, like every flag across America 

 

until the three nine-year-old children and three adults slaughtered at Nashville’s Covenant School are properly buried. I have another neighbor who hides inside his garage a truck bearing

 

a bumper sticker from the local gun shop. It is bright yellow with red letters that drip as loudly as the thirteen stripes on our flag. This guy has planted that flag in his yard 

 

alongside a sunflower flag, flags of pastoral scenes bought at the local garden shop, sometimes a MAGA flag. The American psyche is the backyard of men like this, 

 

staked with false flags and strewn with dollar-store lawn trinkets that look like they were dumped there by last week-end’s severe storm. Only all this stuff—

 

fiberglass giraffes and mushrooms, bunnies and Celtic crosses—is intentionally placed. Tell me again what Jesus said about loving our neighbors, even those who cry wolf

 

when some neighbors speaking truth into bullhorns don’t look like the Bull Connor neighbors who have burdened us with day after day of our children’s humanity stunted 

 

by the ever-hardening space of schools with metal detectors and SROs in combat gear. Last week, in an adjacent town, an eighth grader shot dead a 10th grader. 

 

Also, my neighbors.

Patricia Phillips-Batoma is a writer and teacher who lives in Illinois. She has published poems in The New Verse News, OffCourse, Plants & Poetry, Parentheses, Tuck Magazine, and Spilling Cocoa over Martin Amis.

MATTEO MESSINA DENARO’S GIORGIO ARMANI SUIT HOLDS A PRESS CONFERENCE

by Patricia Phillips-Batoma

Giuseppe di Matteo was kidnapped in 1993 in an attempt to blackmail his father into not giving evidence against the Mafia, Italian prosecutors said. The 12-year-old boy was held in captivity for two years before he was strangled and dissolved in acid. Matteo Messina Denaro, one of the mobsters who ordered little Giuseppe's kidnapping and murder, was finally caught yesterday in Palermo while he visited a private clinic for cancer treatment. —Mirror (UK), January 17, 2023

For Giuseppe di Matteo, who loved animals.

I stand before you today

single-breasted and slim cut

of jacquard silk-wool blend

with breast pocket for a pocket square

made with Italian love.

Gentle fingers

stitched together all the precision-cut

pieces of me into the kind of shape

that dreams someday it will grace

a UEFA champion at a red-carpet gala

or the jaunty gait of a screen star

collecting a prize.

 

Now imagine

our fate in the closet of U Siccu—Diabolik

—hoarder of Raybans and Rolexes,

my Armani brothers, my Versace cousins,

in bunkers during 30 years on the lam.

 

Scars are etched in every single place

he sweats acid of the same grade

used to melt bodies after torture

and strangulation. That is to say

those not simply blasted away.

 

Here on the threshold of his demise

I announce today my candidacy

to serve as outfit for the cremation.

 

After all, nobody wants to don me,

and I, uncomfortable now on any skin,

no longer abide the humiliation of covering up

a criminal body. The way he felt my buttons,

caressed my smooth weave, precludes

all pretense to future dignity.

 

But the worst was how he adjusted each sleeve,

likely how he strangled that pregnant woman,

 

with  just  one  tug. 

Patricia Phillips-Batoma is a writer and teacher who lives in Illinois. She has published poems in OffCourse, Plants & Poetry, Parentheses, Tuck Magazine, and Spilling Cocoa over Martin Amis.