UNDER FIVES

by Laurel Benjamin

The world's worst humanitarian crisis is on track for its worst year yet. Famine alarms are ringing again as over half of Yemen’s population is going hungry. A record 50% of all children under 5 are acutely malnourished and 400,000 are at risk of dying without treatment. —International Rescue Committee’s Amanda Catanzano at the Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing on Yemen, April 21, 2021

If "Hunger Ward" wins an Oscar Sunday night at the 93rd Academy Awards, it could help the short documentary save lives. [The] 39-minute doc was shot in two pediatric malnutrition hospitals in Yemen in 2020. Its main "characters" are health care workers and two children, Abeer, who was 6 and weighed 12 pounds during filming, and Omeima, who was 10 and weighed 24 pounds. —StarTribune, April 23, 2021

They call it under fives

as eyes sockets 

hold bulging red globes

girls and boys with greasy curls 

built on a raging war

as we pull the trigger

“others” bombing

like ribbons cut from the sky

and a pavilion for mourners

now an obscene shroud

no honor for the dead.

In a hospital, crippled

strips of barely flesh 

ladle on a handmade scale—

weigh the bones—

and as one by one 

names on the list

are crossed off, each mother

screams through the corridor.

The girl wears pink 

against hair and skin a light brown 

her eyes green eyes.

How will she become a woman.

The nurse says “smile”

and cradles the girl’s cheek 

with veined hands

as another girl bounces a balloon

over a stareless boy.

No one can get the goods in 

yet we shelve pictures 

in our memory bank 

of knees wider than thighs—

we’ve seen these all our lives

and our new leader says

he’ll pull back 

but more than Saudi support 

like any war

the words civilian, collateral,

starvation. Just separate 

the sinews

cover them with mother’s

breath.

Laurel Benjamin holds an MFA from Mills College. Her work has appeared in Turning a Train of Thought Upside Down: An Anthology of Women's Poetry, California Quarterly, The Midway Review, Mac Queens Quinterly, Wild Roof Journal, Tiny Seed Journal, Global Quarantine Museum Pendemics issue. She is affiliated with the Bay Area Women’s Poetry Salon and the Port Townsend Writers. 

RELATIVE RIGHTS

by Indran Amirthanayagam

Graphic by Brian Stauffer to accompany The Washington Post editorial “Mohammed bin Salman is guilty of murder. Biden should not give him a pass.”

Jamal Khashoggi has been killed

for a third time. The first killing

happened just before a bonesaw

shaved his bones in the Saudi

consulate in Istanbul after

he had been kicked, stabbed,

dismembered. The second killing

took place during the show trial

in a Saudi high court, which led

to three acquittals, three prison

terms, five men condemned

to death. Described as foot

soldiers in the murder, not

the masterminds who got off

free, the five were pardoned

later at the behest of Khashoggi's

children. Now, Khashoggi,

father, journalist, betrothed—

remember he visited

the consulate to sign papers

regarding his new love,

impending marriage--

is killed again, this time

by friendly fire. The US

government has decided

that the special relationship,

the oil, the wars in the region,

preclude any punishment

for the crime. The Crown

Prince who ordered

the killing of the scribe

will remain free to engage

the US and any other

government he wishes. Where

do the scales break down?

Why does Jamal Khashoggi's

memory get sawed again,

and how can we live with

our failure to condemn abuse

everywhere, every time?

Indran Amirthanayagam writes in English, Spanish, French, Portuguese and Haitian Creole. He has 19 poetry books, including The Migrant States (Hanging Loose Press, 2020) and Sur l'île nostalgique (L'Harmattan, 2020). In music, he recorded Rankont Dout. He edits The Beltway Poetry Quarterly, is a columnist for Haiti en Marche, won the Paterson Prize, and is a 2020 Foundation for the Contemporary Arts fellow.

HOW MANY SAUDIS

by Paul Smith

The Guardian has published information about the members of the 15-member team alleged to be responsible for the murder of Jamal Khashoggi. The photos above shos Dr Salah al-Tubaigy, identified by Turkish authorities as one of 15 men present in the Saudi consulate in Istanbul on October 2, when Khashoggi is suspected to have been assassinated. On the left Salah al-Tubaigy is pictured in the annual report of Australia’s Victorian Institute of Forensic Medicine where he trained after being sponsored by the Saudi Government. At right is an image published by Turkey’s Daily Sabah (via ABC) that purports to show the Saudi doctor arriving at Istanbul Airport.

How many Saudi hit men
does it take to do a journalist in?
ten to cut off his fingers
one to take off his head
one to buy several valises
to haul him off in pieces
when he’s dead
another to play some music
to soothe their jangled nerves
one to make up a tale
how this lowlife disappeared
and the last one to
talk to Washington
to make sure the arms deal
goes through


Paul Smith lives near Chicago. He writes fiction and poetry. He likes Hemingway, really likes Bukowski, the Rolling Stones, Beatles, Kinks and Slim Harpo. He can play James Jamerson's bass solo for 'Home Cookin' by Junior Walker & the Allstars.

IN THE VIDEO STILL OF THE SAUDI JOURNALIST KILLED BY THE SAUDI GOVERNMENT

by Alejandro Escudé




















The victim strolls into the scene
wearing dress shoes and a sport coat.
His icy gait is that of a strong, idealistic man,

a man whose life has been propped up
by words written in looping Arabic.
The man independent, unsympathetic.

To the journalist’s right, a Mercedes van,
black, parked like a stand-in for death.
It is the quietus of the journalist.

Mourn his words, wheeled like scimitars,
like mosaic pieces of a shattered mosaic.
The Mercedes ornament on the van’s grille

reflects the dead man in the sport coat
with the fallen words, walking assuredly past
—who is that? A conspirator? A guard?


Alejandro Escudé published his first full-length collection of poems My Earthbound Eye in September 2013. He holds a master’s degree in creative writing from UC Davis and teaches high school English. Originally from Argentina, Alejandro lives in Los Angeles with his wife and two children.

DEJA VU

by Phyllis Wax

'WORST FAMINE IN 100 YEARS' COULD SEE 13 MILLION PEOPLE STARVE IF SAUDI-LED COALITION KEEPS BOMBING YEMEN: U.N.” —Newsweek, October 15, 2018. The United States supplies bombs and other support for the war that’s killed civilians and is creating famine. Children in Yemen are acutely malnourished. Those who survive will often be stunted for the rest of their lives, physically and mentally. Photo Credit: Hammadi Issa/Associated Press via The New York Times, September 26, 2018.

Some of us remember the photos
when the camps were liberated

skeletons
lethargic from lack of food
legs and arms just fleshless bones
ribs perceptible without x-rays                       
                                                                     
In Yemen
it’s the children—
big-eyed
visibly starving                           
                                                     
pinned in place
by warheads
made in the USA
targeting markets
funerals    schools

Social issues are a major focus of Milwaukee poet Phyllis Wax. Among the anthologies and journals her work has appeared in are Portside, Obama-Mentum, TheNewVerse.News, Surreal Poetics, Ars Medica, Naugatuck River Review, The Five-Two, Star 82 Review and Mobius.  When she’s not writing you might find her escorting at a local abortion clinic. She can be reached at poetwax38 (at) gmail.com.

A BRIEF HISTORY OF SORROW IN YEMEN

by John Guzlowski

Dozens of children, many younger than 15, were killed in a Saudi-led coalition airstrike that hit a school bus in northern Yemen on Thursday, according to the Houthi-controlled Health Ministry. The children were on a field trip when their bus was struck at a market, the first stop of the day; 50 were killed and 77 injured, according to the ministry. Most of the children were inside the bus when the airstrike hit, according to a local medic, Yahya al-Hadi. The International Committee for the Red Cross said a hospital it supports in Saada had received 29 bodies of "mainly children" younger than 15, and 40 injured, including 30 children. —CNN, August 10, 2018

Sorrow is the gift
God gives to teach us
what won’t last,
what will fall and be left
on the side of the road
by the mother lost
among refugees.

Sorrow teaches her
the value of screaming.

It will last longer
than bronze shoes,
longer than her baby’s
photograph.

Nothing else she loved
is left. The home in Yemen
God bestowed? The husband
whose love was worth so much?
The baby?

The gift of everything is lost,
the way a penny is lost
In the dirt around her.

All that’s left
is the road she stands on—
that and the sorrow
He bestowed, the scream
that ends in screaming.

John Guzlowski's writing appears in Garrison Keillor’s Writer’s Almanac, Rattle, Ontario Review, North American Review, and other journals.  His poems and personal essays about his Polish parents’ experiences as slave laborers in Nazi Germany and refugees in Chicago appear in his memoir Echoes of Tattered Tongues. Echoes received the 2017 Benjamin Franklin Poetry Award and the Eric Hoffer Foundation's Montaigne Award for most thought-provoking book of the year.  He is also the author of two Hank Purcell mysteries and the war novel Road of Bones.

SAUDI ARABIA

by Shirani Rajapakse

RIYADH, Saudi Arabia — In elections that allowed Saudi women to vote and run for office for the first time, more than a dozen women won seats on local councils in different parts of the country, officials said on Sunday. While the move was hailed by some as a new step into the public sphere by women in this religious and conservative monarchy, the local councils have limited powers and the new female members will make up less than 1 percent of the elected council members nationwide. —NY Times, Dec. 13, 2015. Photo credit: Ahmed Yosri/European Pressphoto Agency.

What use a vote
when they are all shrouded

in darkness? An
image at the periphery of the horizon

crying to be acknowledged,
a shadow fluttering past, a sad cloud

shielding its eyes from
a dust storm,

a puppet in the house
dancing to someone’s idea of a

tune. None of these are of much use,
except to entertain

and you don’t
need a vote for that.


Shirani Rajapakse writes poetry and fiction. Winner of the Cha “Betrayal” Poetry Contest 2013, finalist in the Anna Davidson Rosenberg Poetry Awards 2013, and shortlisted for the Gratiaen Award 2010 her work appears in Flash Fiction International (Norton 2015), Silver Birch, Asian Signature, Moving Worlds, Berfrois, Counterpunch, Earthen Lamp Journal, Dove Tales, Buddhist Poetry Review, TheNewVerse.News, About Place Journal, Ballads (Dagda 2014), Poems for Freedom (River Books 2013), Voices Israel Poetry Anthology 2012 and many others.