TO GUINEA, WITH LOVE

by Indran Amirthanayagam

Amid Ukraine Exodus, Reports Emerge of Bias Against Africans —VOA, March 2, 2022

The tradesman from Guinea has lived in Odessa for fourteen years. He is

afraid. In one day all of Ukraine's airports shut down. In one night heavy

bombs fell just ouside of town. They are falling now. Russian soldiers

landed on the beach and are marching towards Kyiv. The horror. The sadness.

It is happening. Shock and awe. Awful. Wrath. Madness. Chernobyl, symbol

of nuclear death has been captured. No reports yet on the state of the concrete.

Where are we going? I listen to the trembling voice of my friend from Guinea.

He says he will watch and wait for another day or two, huddle at home

by his television in the apartment block. If fighting comes to his neighborhood

then he will call Guinea. Ask to be flown out. How many diplomats has

Guinea posted in Ukraine? How many cars and planes? Airports are shut.

But the sea flows by Odessa. He has lived in Odessa for fourteen years.

He knows people with boats. He has sold them housewares. He will

ask them to take him away. Past the battleships. To Guinea.

Indran Amirthanayagam's newest book is Ten Thousand Steps Against the Tyrant (BroadstoneBooks). Recently published is Blue Window (Ventana Azul), translated by Jennifer Rathbun.(Dialogos Books). In 2020, Indran produced a “world" record by publishing three new poetry books written in three languages: The Migrant States (Hanging Loose Press, New York), Sur l'île nostalgique (L’Harmattan, Paris) and Lírica a tiempo (Mesa Redonda, Lima). He writes in English, Spanish, French, Portuguese, Haitian Creole and has twenty poetry books as well as a music album Rankont Dout. He edits The Beltway Poetry Quarterly and helps curate Ablucionistas. He won the Paterson Prize and received fellowships from The Foundation for the Contemporary Arts, New York Foundation for the Arts, US/Mexico Fund For Culture, and the MacDowell Colony. He hosts the Poetry Channel on YouTube.

SARIN WORK

by Alejandro Escudé

Volunteers wear protective gear during a class of how to respond to a chemical attack, in the northern Syrian city of Aleppo on September 15, 2013.JM LOPEZ/AFP/GETTY IMAGES via Wired.

The mood is sarin and the light is sarin
there are sarin children dancing in the air
convulsing skyward, there are sarin trees
and sarin ships firing sarin missiles
at sarin airports where sarin helicopters
sit ready to traverse sarin lands, over sarin
rooftops, blanketing a country of sarin,
a language of sarin, the sarin of resorts
where the leaders of sarin meet to discuss
treaties over sarin and ice cream. But one
needs two chemicals to form sarin, and sarin
lasts a short time, sarin is short as life itself,
meaningless really, unless it is packaged
just right; still, a world without sarin is a world
flooded in sarin, with sarin dreams like those
of the sarin children who felt it rain down
on them and saw their fingers turn to roads,
their lungs become mountains, their hearts
pumping sarin into their sarin souls.


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.

HOW DID WE LET IT GET SO FAR?

by Lucia Cherciu




He wants to close borders and build a wall
while refugees are waiting in pain.
We watch in disbelief and want to crawl

back into bed and hide for four years, then all
come out and vote. We brainstorm ways to strain
his plans to close borders and build a wall.

What strategies shall we use to stall
the madness derailing from his chain?
We watch in disbelief and want to crawl

as every day new stories snowball
into disasters and catastrophes that sustain
his plans to close borders and build a wall.

Those of us who lived under dictators can recall
the disappointment, hurt, and disdain.
We watch in disbelief and want to crawl

and set up stages and struggle to tell all,
gather crowds at street corners and explain
what happens when someone builds a wall.
We watch in disbelief and want to crawl.

Lucia Cherciu is a Professor of English at SUNY/Dutchess in Poughkeepsie, NY, and she writes both in English and in Romanian. Her new book Train Ride to Bucharest is forthcoming from Sheep Meadow Press. Her other books include Edible Flowers (Main Street Rag, 2010), Lepădarea de Limbă/The Abandonment of Language (Vinea, 2009), and Altoiul Râsului/Grafted Laughter (Brumar 2010). Her poetry was nominated twice for a Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net.