THE MICKEY MURAL

by Mike Mesterton-Gibbons

Murals of cartoon characters including Mickey Mouse and Baloo from The Jungle Book painted on the walls of an asylum seeker reception centre to welcome children have been removed on the orders of the immigration minister, Robert Jenrick. The murals were painted over because he thought they were too welcoming and sent the wrong message. —The Guardian, July 7, 2023

The Immigration chief on Team UK 

Has ordered: Whitewash walls—kids shouldn't be

Encouraged to feel welcome here if they

Migrated in small boats across the sea.

In Dover, staff demurred at playing ball.

Cartoons of Mickey Mouse and bear Baloo—

Kind gestures in a mural on a wall—

Extended caring hands of friendship to

Young kids, alone. But now those pictures are 

Misguidedly effaced. What art will go

Up in their place? Cruella? Scar? Jafar? ...

Right minds must feel embarrassed, since they know

An action that's appalling and absurd

Lets Britain down—and no child is deterred.

Mike Mesterton-Gibbons is a Professor Emeritus at Florida State University who has returned to live in his native England. His acrostic sonnets have appeared in Autumn Sky Poetry Daily, Better Than Starbucks, the Creativity Webzine, Current Conservation, the Daily Mail, the Ekphrastic Review, Grand Little Things, Light, Lighten Up Online, The New Verse News, Oddball Magazine, Rat’s Ass Review, the Satirist, The Washington Post, and WestWard Quarterly.

TRUE COLORS

by Julie Steiner

"Refugees Welcome" by Omar Ab Abdallat

A Haitian family's asylum case shows double standard at the border: It took three doctors, a small team of lawyers and multiple nonprofits on both sides of the border to get an exemption for a Haitian family seeking asylum in the United States… Border officials have routinely granted exemptions to Ukrainian nationals while subjecting asylum seekers from other countries to much more scrutiny. That included the Haitian family, who had to wait almost four months to get an exemption. Advocates said their case underscores just how arbitrary and unfair the country’s asylum system is right now. —KPBS, April 5, 2022

We’re opening our hearts and homes and wallets.

We’ve got donations piling up on pallets

for families in flight from bombs and bullets—

their frightened faces traumatized and pale. It’s

inspiring, seeing decency at work.

It’s proof the world’s not totally berzerk.

When strangers need our help, we never shirk

our duty. (If their faces aren’t too dark.)

Julie Steiner is a pseudonym in San Diego, California. Besides The New Verse News, the venues in which Julie's poetry has appeared include the Able Muse Review, Rattle, Light, and The Asses of Parnassus.

THE MATAMOROS-BROWNSVILLE BRIDGE

by Janice MacKenzie

Asylum seekers have been waiting for hearings in Matamoros, Mexico, across the Matamoros-Brownsville Bridge from Brownsville, Texas. John Moore/Getty Images via Vox. Organizers say the camp is one of the last remaining along the U.S./Mexico border. Migrants returned to Mexico have faced months-long postponements in immigration hearings held underneath tents and in trailers across the river in Brownsville. Many of those returned to Mexico live in tents along the river for the duration of proceedings. Some have been living homeless for over a year, surviving with the assistance of Brownsville and Matamoros-based aid groups. Hearings are currently postponed until Texas reaches Stage 3 of its reopening plan. Due to a surge in cases, it will likely be months until proceedings begin again. Prior to COVID-19, the camp’s population was estimated to be over 2,500 with more asylum seekers living further into Matamoros. A recent census conducted by Angry Tias and Abuelas of the Rio Grande Valley documented 960 residents, suggesting that people have been abandoning their cases. —The Brownsville Herald, July 29, 2020

On this side, the tent city—
mud, flies, the stink of
unwashed bodies and latrines
families crowded together—
no hope, no future

On that side, steel & concrete—
cages for the children
uniformed men, with guns and
cold eyes
fences and barriers—
but hope for
something better

Between them, the river
wide and muddy, snaking through
the tall grasses and scrub brush
a barrier—but also a friend
giving water, a bath,
clean clothes

And spanning that divide,
the bridge—
symbol of connection,
of joining together
of safe passage

Now, a different kind of barrier
unfriendly concrete and steel girders
barbed wire and chain-link fencing
forming a narrow corridor
like a cattle chute
to check points,
to rejection

On this side, the sign reads
“Feliz Viaje”—
“Happy Journey”
though my journey was
anything but happy

On that side, an American flag flies
over a sign:  “Welcome to the United States
of America”—
but there is no welcome there
for me
and never will be

Janice MacKenzie is an acupuncturist, an activist, a poet and a photographer.  She came back to poetry after a long hiatus during which she built her acupuncture practice and became active in acupuncture politics.  The current political situation in the U.S. calls for poetry and activism. Janice has organized a weekly vigil since June, 2018, for the children of the migrants/asylum-seekers stuck at the Mexican border.  She lives in Sellersville, Pennsylvania.

OUR COUNTRY IS FULL

by Philip C. Kolin

"Horton Hears a Hoax" posted by george_spiggott at TPM

The country is too full
of borders, ports of entry,
coasts, rivers, airports,
sanctuary cities.
We have too many huddled
masses, tired refuse.
Others are having trouble
being on top.
Too many immigrant babies
wearing brown skin
with no name tags, no parents.
The slats in our walls are too full
of peering eyes and restless hands
trying to squeeze in. Lather the posts
with strychnine. Send them home
in ICE body bags, R. I. P.
We have too many reporters
filing too  many fake news stories—
we need to manacle their tongues.
Too many fact checkers,
just too many facts.
We are too full of Democrats;
Nader, Schiff, and Pelozi
ought to be under house arrest.
We are too full of obstructions
to collusions. The courts are too full
of judges of Mexican descent.
We have too many states
on the coasts; ship them
to the middle of the country
to learn about making America great again.
We are too full of popular votes;
let the Electoral College prevail.
The country is just too full of wind.

Philip C. Kolin is the University Distinguished Professor at the University of Southern Mississippi where he also edits the Southern Quarterly. He has published more than 40 books on Shakespeare, Tennessee Williams, Edward Albee, African American playwrights as well as  seven collections of poems. His most recent book is Reaching Forever: Poems in the Poiema Series of Cascade Books.

IT'S A SIGN

by Jean Varda




It’s a sign, the black charred ground
the empty space where ponderosa,
cedar and oaks once stood tall and stately
It’s a sign, the sparseness of insects
and birds, the temperatures
unbearably hot or unbearably cold
It’s a sign, the school shootings
the police killings of unarmed men, the
families at the border being separated
from their children and turned away
as they flee violence and are only
faced with more. It’s a sign when more
people are pushing shopping carts
on the street then shopping carts in the
store or sleeping by the river in tents
and makeshift shelters.
It’s a sign when artificial intelligence
has taken over almost everything we do
and children stare into digital screens
every chance they get. It’s a sign when
the highest death rate is due to suicide
and drugs, when a nineteen year old
kills herself because she cannot bear
the guilt and pain of having watched
her best friend die in a massacre at
her school. It’s a sign when children
are the ones gathering by the millions
in the nation’s capital to ask the adults
to do something about the semi
automatic weapons that killed their
friends. And when children sit in offices
of politicians begging them to pass
legislation on the environmental
emergency so they have a future on
this shrinking planet when they
should be playing hopscotch
                                and eating jelly beans, it’s a sign.  

Jean Varda gave her first poetry reading at Stone Soup Gallery in Boston Mass. Presented by Poet Jack Powers. This was followed by performances on street corners, prisons and churches with her mentor story teller Brother Blue. Then to San Francisco to join Kush with Cloud House, and the largest collection of San Francisco Beat poets on film. She has published six chapbooks of poetry, establishing Sacred Feather Press. She started four open mics, taught poetry writing workshops, hosted a radio show, was nominated for a pushcart prize. All while raising two daughters and working as a Hospice nurse. She now resides Chico, CA where she works as a nurse and a collage artist. 

MAKING OF AN ENEMY

by Nan Ottenritter

Last year, American Bridge submitted a FOIA request when it was reported that Trump’s former head of the Office of Refugee Resettlement kept a spreadsheet of information on pregnant minors in his care, including whether the minor had asked for an abortion. Those documents were finally received and Rachel Maddow made them public on March 15, 2019.

after Randall Jarrell’s “The Death of the Ball Turret Gunner”

From border’s legal crossing I fell into the State.

And I nurtured a rape child in my belly.

Fourteen years old, separated from parents,

Dates of assault, menstrual cycle tracked,

Caged, and baby birthed, I became State’s enemy,

And you wonder why.

Nan Ottenritter is a poet and musician who lives in Richmond, VA.

LEBRON JAMES WILL SAVE THE WORLD

by Alejandro Escudé

LeBron James, I make a teacher’s salary and can’t afford an apartment.
LeBron James, will you find the dirty and shirtless on the road a home?
LeBron James, are you ghostly? The nightmare trots over the hills, LeBron.
The makers are making sugar, LeBron. Have you been to Cuba, LeBron?
The ocean oceans, LeBron. Will you buy me a brand new couch, LeBron?
It matters there are too many fast food joints in my neighborhood, LeBron.
Once, I heard a young man say he was hungry in class and didn’t have lunch,
LeBron. Will someone call the police, or will someone call LeBron Jmes.
Does a basketball resemble a fish, LeBron? Will you feed the masses?
I call on LeBron James to slam dunk a basketball over Donald T***p.
Oh snap, did LeBron just dunk a basketball over Donald T***p? Oh snap!
Help me figure out my new Samsung Galaxy Nine, LeBron James. It’s a war
out there, LeBron, but I love you because you always give it your all at practice.
Practice! Yes! It doesn’t rain in Southern California, LeBron. Will you miss
Cleveland, LeBron? Or whatever gym you were forced to lay your head on
while the flood grew outside and the helicopters circled over your beard.
Oh LeBron, your beard is biblical, does that mean you are a messiah?
My children have never heard of you, LeBron James. Mexican mothers
searching for their children with flashlights in the under-caves of humanity
have never heard of you either, LeBron. My spellcheck keeps changing your
name from LeBron to Hebron. My spellcheck underlines your name in red;
is that a sign, LeBron? I hear cop sirens blaring outside my window, LeBron,
are you in one of those black and whites, LeBron? I bet if you were in one
of those cruisers, you’d be careful with your gun, LeBron, you’d never feel
unaware or scared or nervous. You’d know what do to because you’ve
been in tight positions before: two points down, thirty seconds to go
in the fourth quarter. Is it the fourth quarter, LeBron? My butt aches from
sitting on the hard, wooden bleachers, LeBron. I am a chubby angel with
red wings watching you dribble across a court of clouds, LeBron. We anoint
you King James. The people anoint you King. They want you to save them!
Save them LeBron. Can a basketball be rolled out like the Magna Carta?
LeBron, will you tie up all the Republicans with ropes made of batwings?
The news pundits, men and women, light up when they utter your name.
LeBron. I do too. I can’t get enough of your encompassing smile, your height.
My god you’re tall, LeBron! Yesterday, I overheard two women comparing
how tall their husbands were. It was important that they compare heights.
I heard the mouth of a river opening. It was not the mouth of the Mississippi.
It was no river with a poem written about it. It was River LeBron. It opened
it’s mouth and in sailed the ship of race, class, hunger, sickness, and war.

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.

DISASTER TENTS

by Tricia Knoll

Getty Images via Daily Kos, June 26, 2018

Beige vinyl heaves in the wind
like a lung. Crackles. I know.
The whine of the air-conditioner
insists that you cluster on low-slung cots
to speak directly into each other’s ears
or not talk at all. Intermittent cold blasts
interrupts every dream. Forget privacy.
Forget home and bedtime stories.
Store what you have under your cot.
They pitch these tents under all-bright
overhead lights. You will not sleep well
in this compound of generators, toilet
and bath modules, chain link and guards.
You will hear others' nightmares.
Your feet will scuffle on vinyl ground.
Hold your children. Let them not be stolen.
You may despair. The tent compresses you,
an I cannot breathe of internment.

Tricia Knoll lived in one of the FEMA disaster tents going up to house immigration refugees. She was a responder to Hurricane Katrina. She understands the differences between her experiencce and those of todays' traumatized families. She knew exactly when she would go to her real home, certainty. She asked to be in this tent, free choice. She was not afraid, privileged.  She cannot forget what it felt like to live inside one of these disaster tents.

INTOLERANCE DEGREE ZERO: A LETTER FROM HOMELAND SECURITY, THE US ATTORNEY GENERAL, AND THE POTUS

by Roxanne Lynn Doty

As the White House faces court orders to reunite families separated at the border, immigrant children as young as three years old are being ordered into court for their own deportation proceedings, according to attorneys in Texas, California and Washington, D.C. —The Texas Tribune, June 27, 2018

Dear Migrants and Asylum Seekers,

     We are implementing policies to keep our homeland
safe from your scattered bones and disobedient
dreams that traverse la linea between our air and yours.
We have executive orders, vacant Walmarts
and Bible verses on our side.  In the name of sovereignty,
we will send vultures to swoop heavy over the hearts
of your children, seal loopholes in arid scratches of earth
with blood from blisters on your feet. We will erase
your name and bury your destiny in an open grave
on the migrant trail as we watch the sky rain dust
from skeletons of all the crossers we have funneled
into the killing fields of the Sonoran, Mohave
and Chihuahuan Deserts. And if you emerge
from these wastelands, we will warehouse your sons
and daughters behind the stripes of our flag,
as sludge spills from the sewers of our mouths.
God bless America, we are not a sanctuary,
we do not do body counts, and we do not keep track
of where we send your babies.

Roxanne Lynn Doty lives in Tempe, Arizona. Her short stories and poems have appeared in Forge, I70 Review, Soundings Review, Four Chambers Literary Magazine, Lascaux Review, Lunaris Review, Journal of Microliterature, TheNewVerse.News, Ocotillo Review, and are forthcoming in Saranac Review, Gateway Review, and Reunion—The Dallas Review. Two of her short stories were finalists in the 2012 and 2014 New Letters Alexander Patterson Cappon Prize for Fiction, and the editor of Lascaux Review nominated one of her stories for the 2015 Million Writers Award.

ABECEDARIO

by German Dario

“Foster Care or Whatever” by Pia Guerra at The Nib

todos los nombres

child a
came from central american country x
wearing dust
from three countries
and the sweat of his ancestors

child b
came from central American country z

           we think

she was too young to speak
but the twig
she had in place
of the left arm
on her doll
is from a tree
that grows in country z

child c
was just a foot and chancla
wrapped in a serape

child d
was raped
          repeatedly
wants to die
but crossed a line
and got picked up

child e
is running
from
a new family
a gang that tattooed
their brand
on virgin skin
and killed the mom

child f
had a good
hardworking clan
but they were taken
in a van
and closed doors
don't explain
   anything

child g's clothes were on child h

I
           do nothing

child m and n
might be related
by blood
if not by blood
by abuse
from a coyote
with candy
gun
and putrid
acid tongue

o
p
q
r
s

todos los nombres
now
all are safe
behind
fence link
dreamcatchers


German Dario, recently published at The Friday Influence and The Blue Collar Review, resides in Arizona.

FROZEN TIME

by Jim Gustafson




ICE is the right name
for those whose cold hands snatch
children from their mother,

who deny the suffocating
air, who eat their lunch
in front of the starving.

Don’t speak of laws.
Immorality is not justified
by obedience.

This is not the first time
the wicked have ruled.
Greed driven and cruel,

we return always
to where we have been before.
Nothing moves us forward.

We must face the truth
about ourselves. Listen,
you will hear it spoken

in the constant cries
of the children gathering
at the borders.

Jim Gustafson holds an M. Div. from Garrett Theological Seminary at Northwestern University in his hometown of Evanston, Illinois and an MFA from the University of Tampa. He is the author of Take Fun Seriously (Limitless Press, 2008), Driving Home (Aldrich Press, 2013), Unassisted Living (Big Table Publishing, 2017), and soon-to-be-released Friar Fred’s Diary (Big Table Publishing, 2018). He teaches at Florida Gulf Coast University. Jim and his wife Connie live in Fort Myers, Florida where he reads, writes, and pulls weeds.