EIGHT WAYS OF LOOKING AT A MISSING PERSON

by Kenton K. Yee

Alicia Navarro, 18, was said to be upset following an FBI raid on the apartment where she had been living in with an unidentified man in Havre, Montana. —Mail Online, August 1, 2023

after Wallace Stevens

I
In the still, the most moving thing 
is an empty chair.  
 
II
Suspicion spreads like wildfire smoke.
 
Murder and suicide are likely.
Murder, suicide, abduction, and ghosting are likely.   
 
III
What is it that captivates us so, 
the how or the why,
what happened or that it could happen to anyone?
 
IV
Memories of the missing linger
like shadows of headstones on fresh snow.
 
V
I know what the stats say and 
I know you must investigate your leads.
I know, too, that nothing’s as it first appears.
 
So disheveled men in wrinkled suits, 
why do you fixate on the husband?   
Didn’t you watch that movie?
 
VI
[—missing—]
 
VII
People are vanishing, 
some to new identities.    
 
She’s probably cruising Canada in a Mercedes,
missing the little girl and big boy she left behind. 
 
VIII
People vanish and people appear 
like shadows of headstones.
 
Please, at least let your parents know you’re okay.

Author’s Note: The two ongoing news stories about missing young women (Alicia Navarro and Carlee Russell) reappearing—Navarro after 4 years—caused me to think about why we (and the media) are so captivated by missing-person stories. According to the DoJ's NamUS database, over 600,000 US residents go missing every year, which far outnumber the 4,400 unidentified bodies turning up each year. This suggests that most of the missing are either abducted and still alive or running away and adopting new identities of their own volition.

Kenton K. Yee’s recent poems appear (or will soon) in Plume Poetry, Threepenny Review, TAB Journal, BoomerLitMag, Sugar House Review, Terrain.org, Rattle, Matter Monthly, Hawaii Pacific Review, and  The New Verse News among others. Kenton writes from Northern California.

I AM FORGETTING HOW TO TELL STORIES

by Megan Merchant

“When you recognize the childrenand find the Mother,you will be free of sorrow.” —Tao

My son is in the backseat. He asks for a story on the way to school.
I begin with immortality because there are bullets and I started this
morning reading about the abduction of a little boy, how he was buried
in his red jacket. My son has a red jacket and when he spreads his arms,
he looks like a ladybug scrawling air. His stuck out of the dirt like a flag,
but I cannot tell you what happened before the boy died. It will calcify
the tenderest parts of you. I know.  His mother waited for twenty-seven years
believing, the whole time, that her son would be found and come home.
Every mother I know says, my baby, no matter how much time has passed.
Which is why I begin with immortality. I’m sure that she wrote his name
in black ink on the tag, quite certain it would be lost. Ensuring, when it did,
that it would be returned to her, with care.

Megan Merchant is mostly forthcoming. She is the author of two full-length poetry collections: Gravel Ghosts (available now through Glass Lyre Press) The Dark’s Humming (Winner of the 2015 Lyrebird Prize, Glass Lyre Press, forthcoming 2017), four chapbooks and a forthcoming children’s book with Philomel Books. She lives in the tall pines of Prescott, Arizona and teaches Mindfulness & Meditation at Prescott College. 

WHAT REMAINS

by Jennifer Hernandez

Jacob Wetterling's mother Patty said the remains of her son have been found. "Our hearts are broken. I am not responding to any media yet as I have no words," Patty Wetterling wrote in a text message to KARE 11. The Stearns County, Minnesota Sheriff's Office confirmed that Jacob Wetterling's remains had been located. The Ramsey County Medical Examiner and a forensic odontologist identified the remains as Wetterling's Saturday morning. . . . The disappearance of Jacob remains one of the highest-profile child abduction cases in U.S. history. Wetterling was 11 when he was abducted by a masked man with a gun on Oct. 22, 1989, in St. Joseph, Minn. —MPR News, September 3, 2016. Above: Patty and Jerry Wetterling show a photo of their son Jacob. Photograph: Craig Lassig/AP via The Guardian, September 4, 2016.

We’ve been living with Jacob
for twenty-seven years
since he disappeared
from that stretch
of deserted country road.

I was in college then,
160 miles northwest on I-94,
didn’t watch much TV
or read the newspapers,
but I knew about Jacob.

Saw his smile on billboards,
milk cartons, the sides of semis.
My brother was fourteen that fall.
Did my mom’s gut clench then
like mine does now?

I am the mother of three boys.
The youngest, eleven,
Jacob’s age in October 1989.
We learned about monsters,
those of us who grew up with Jacob.

No free-range parenting for us.
I watched my boys like a hawk
even on the dead-end street
in front of my suburban home.
Probably I watched too much.

I would not lose those pieces
of my heart. Patty Wetterling—
I hope you know that we, the mothers,
are with you. We carry Jacob on our shoulders,
in our hearts. You say you don’t have words.

We cannot begin to fathom.

Jennifer Hernandez, Minnesota teacher and writer, has performed her poetry at a non-profit garage, a taxidermy-filled bike shop, and in the kitchen for her children. Her recent work has appeared in Minnesota Women’s Press, Mothers Always Write and Silver Birch Press, as well as Bird Float, Tree Song (Silverton Books) and A Prince Tribute (Yellow Chair Press).

FIVE YEARS OLD

by Lavinia Kumar




On the cold floor of void the child cries.
And in the echo she hears only the buzz
of a fly she cannot see.  There’s no end
to the hurt in the fiery bumps once
her face, in the knife edge hackings
over her bottom half.  And he did it.

She brought him water as was proper
for a child.  Then in his room she heard
her screams and his loud breathing
as he tore the blue dress her aunt bought
for her birthday last week – her mother
would be so mad.  And then he did it.

And he did it again.  And more.  Punched
her face when she cried.  Now she feels
hardness of the floor.  Wants to run if
he’s gone.  Cannot move.  Hears the fly again. 
Cannot hear her mother.  Hears her cries.
He put candles in her.  She emptied when he did it.


Lavinia Kumar lives in New Jersey. Her chapbook Rivers of Saris is published by Main Street Rag and her poetry has appeared in several publications in the US and UK. She writes a blog for seniorsmagazine.org , and is an editor of children’s poetry at PoetryWITS.