AMERICAN CREOLE

by Indran Amirthanayagam

An old man chats in creole

on a bench by Prospect Park.

Along Empire Boulevard

a group of teens high-five

kouman ou ye, sak pase;

a writer, deep in a book,

puts it aside and stares

into space, mouths

a silent cry, Ayiti,

in and about the

park on an early May

afternoon, the air 

warm, every language 

out for a stroll but all 

in a handmaiden's role 

to the tongue sung 

loudest in exile. 

in 2023, that country 

in the Caribbean Sea

boiling and burning 

and sending its children 

and women, men 

and old men and 

old women, all

who can find a way

out via the new deals

of sponsorship

or the old murderous

tricks of climbing

aboard rickety boats

to live or die

in the sea

beyond the Keys.

Indran Amirthanayagam is the translator of Origami: Selected Poems of Manuel Ulacia (Dialogos Books). Ten Thousand Steps Against the Tyrant (BroadstoneBooks) is the newest collection of Indran's own poems. 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 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 and publishes poetry books with Sara Cahill Marron at Beltway Editions.

OUT AT SEA

by Lee Eustace

Almost 12 hours after two vessels sank in the Aegean sea, rescue workers hampered by inclement weather were in a race against the clock on Thursday to find survivors as authorities reported that at least 16 women and a boy had died when an overloaded boat capsized east of the island of Lesbos…. In a separate incident hundreds of miles west, at least five people were thought to have died overnight when another boat ran aground off Kythira, to the south of the Peloponnese…. Last month the Greek migration ministry said it had prevented about 150,000 people illegally entering the country so far this year, though rights groups say many have been prevented through a policy of pushbacks, in contravention of international law.—The Guardian, 6 October 2022. Photo: A local resident stands on a cliff as bodies of migrants are seen next floating debris after a sailboat carrying migrants smashed into rocks and sank off the island of Kythera, southern Greece, Thursday, October 6, 2022. AP Photo/Thanassis Stavrakis via The Greek Herald, 7 October 2022

Boats. Boats, approaching the shore.

Turn them around, we’ve room for no more.

Men, women, and children on board.

We’re sorry it’s something we cannot afford.

But where can they go and what will they do?

Well, that’s not a problem for me and you.

 

Out on the boat their voices can be heard

Please let us enter—the children are scared.

The waves are strong and the water is cold

Please open your hearts and your household.

Precious little food and water in supply

We won’t have enough if you let us pass by.

 

The sun starts to set and the boats turn around

We’ve come in search of help. But no help have we found.

Out on the horizon the waves begin to rage

Soon you will find us splashed on the front page

of newspapers which read, “Migrants Lost At Sea.”

Well, it’s not a problem for you. It’s a problem for us.

Lee Eustace (he/him) is a writer and poet whose work centres on the themes of relationships, social constructs, and culture. Lee is previously self-published in the creative nonfiction space and is now in the advanced stages of producing a debut novel, a collection of poetry, and a standalone collection of short stories. His works have found a home at Apricot Press, Free_The_Verse, Dipity Literary Magazine, Eunoia Review, and the London Wildlife Trust. Follow his Instagram @creativeleestorytelling for updates on his progress.

THE WATERS OF LAKE MEAD

by Alfred Fournier

Water levels at Lake Mead have fallen dramatically amid a record drought. Compare the satellite images of the lake in 2000 and in 2022, and you can see the stark decline. NASA Earth Observatory via Vox, August 17, 2022

shrunken by drought, 

reveal body by body our sins: 

missing children and sunken mob hits,

bricks heaved into once-deep water. 

Inch by inch, layers of strata denuded 

become sheets of ancient music 

played on instruments of doom. 

One last chorus for the climate scientists, 

our voices rising in thin atmosphere,

where far above the moon peers down. 

Is that a frown on the old man’s face, 

or does our willful dance with fate amuse him? 

Alfred Fournier is an entomologist, writer and community volunteer living in Phoenix, Arizona. His poetry has appeared in The New Verse News, International Times, The Main Street Rag, The American Journal of Poetry, The Indianapolis Review, and elsewhere. 

MY BIASED DREAMS

by Cindy Hill

People who have arrived from Ukraine wait to board a bus outside the main railway station in Przemysl, Poland, on March 12. Credit: Sean Gallup/Getty Images via The Washington Post, March 13, 2022.

A boat carrying around two dozen migrants capsized in the Mediterranean Sea off the coast of Libya on Saturday, with at least 19 people missing and presumed dead, authorities said. Libya’s coast guard said that a group of 23 migrants—both Egyptians and Syrians—set off from the eastern city of Tobruk earlier in the day. Three migrants were rescued and taken to hospital. Only one body was retrieved and search efforts were ongoing, the agency said. The shipwreck is the latest tragedy at sea involving migrants trying to cross the Mediterranean from the North African nation in a desperate attempt to reach European shores. Libya has emerged as the dominant transit point for migrants fleeing war and poverty in Africa and the Middle East, hoping for a better life in Europe. —The Washington Post, March 13, 2022. Photo: Migrants in Tripoli, Libya on 19 October 2021. Credit: Stringer/Anadolu Agency via Middle East Memo, March 14, 2022.

I dreamt about a girl, thirteen years old,

walking from Kyiv wearing a dark teal down

puffer coat, a white knit hat with pompom,

and her cousin’s moon boots, which kept the cold

away, though they’d seen better days. She rolled

her eyes and tugged her earbuds out, then frowned

and waited for her brother. She sat down

on tumbled piles of broken concrete, scrolled

through her phone, then arms-length, took a selfie.

 

I never dreamt a girl in Syria

was walking to the border of Turkey,

or of a girl escaping Libya

by boat, destined to sink in storms of dread,

though each had been alive, and now was dead.

 

My deep-sleeping brain may have remembered

how my great-grandmother’s remaining kin—

slaughtered by Ceausescu on a mountain

pass—were not so far away, as black birds

fly; and those wheat fields that I’ve seen pictured

on the news called to mind her deep-scarred shins,

sliced by brother’s scythe as they dropped grain in

sheaves then stacked in golden stooks. English words

could not console her for what had happened.

 

I dreamt about a girl whose looks I knew,

whose patterns were the same as those I’ve drawn

in cross-stitch on a pillowcase in blue

and gold or black and red, in sheaves of wheat

I’ve etched with cotton thread. I never dreamt

of girls whose stories I have never read,

though they had been alive, and now are dead.

Cindy Ellen Hill is an attorney, writer, musician and obsessed gardener living in Middlebury VT. She is that author of Wild Earth, a collection of sonnets from Antrim Press, and Elegy for the Trees, a book of sonnets upcoming from Kelsay Books. Her poetry has been published in Vermont Magazine, the Minison Project, PanGaia, Sagewoman, WildEarth, Vermont Life, Measure, the Classical Poets Society online, Ancient Paths online, The Lyric, and the National Public Radio Themes and Variations program. She is presently an MFA student at the Vermont College of Fine Arts.

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.

ONE MORE

by Ann Malaspina

Graphic by Imad Abu Shtayyah.

Off the island of Kos
you crawl through the sea
coughing salt
flailing arms—
while all around,
fishermen scoop babies,
haul grown men,
rescue women
from sunken boats
and slippery rocks
all day and night
for weeks
and months
until there is no
room on the beach
for even one more.

Still you splash to shore,
eyes stinging, skin raw
from terror nights and hunger days,
from lost husband,
lost roof,
lost country.
You swallow sea.
You fight the wind.
It is no use.
It is all there is.
It is.

When suddenly a wave
lifts you high and clean--
the same wave
that drove Odysseus
so far away
and home again.
Frothy warm and curled
like your mother's arms,
the wave lifts you,
carries you,
tumbles you
onto earthly sand
of despair and hope,
breathless,
breathing,
alive,
and the people make room.


A poet and a children's author living in New Jersey, Ann Malaspina has published two poems at TheNewVerse.News.

THE BOATS

by Joan Colby

Mithridates survived 17 days before expiring.

Head, hands and feet stuck out
Between two wooden boats.
The face, the extremities smeared
With honey for insects, stinging wasps,
Flies. Force fed so that he lives
In the torment of worms and maggots
Eating him from the inside out. A death
Reserved for traitors.

A cordon drawn. He needs to hide.
They’d walked from the blast
Satisfied. Now it’s gone wrong.
His brother’s body beneath wheels.
Bleeding, he crawls under the tarp
Of a white boat in someone’s yard.
All day, silent, Trapped in torment
eating him from the inside out.

Joan Colby has published widely in journals such as Poetry, Atlanta Review, South Dakota Review, The Spoon River Poetry Review, New York Quarterly, the new renaissance, Grand Street, Epoch, and Prairie Schooner. Awards include two Illinois Arts Council Literary Awards, Rhino Poetry Award, the new renaissance Award for Poetry, and an Illinois Arts Council Fellowship in Literature. She was a finalist in the GSU Poetry Contest (2007), Nimrod International Pablo Neruda Prize (2009, 2012), and received honorable mentions in the North American Review's James Hearst Poetry Contest (2008, 2010). She is the editor of Illinois Racing News, and lives on a small horse farm in Northern Illinois. She has published 11 books including The Lonely Hearts Killers and How the Sky Begins to Fall (Spoon River Press), The Atrocity Book (Lynx House Press) and Dead Horses and Selected Poems from FutureCycle Press. Selected Poems received the 2013 FutureCycle Prize.  Properties of Matter was published in spring of 2014 by Aldrich Press (Kelsay Books). Two chapbooks are forthcoming in 2014: Bittersweet (Main Street Rag Press) and Ah Clio (Kattywompus Press). Colby is also an associate editor of Kentucky Review and FutureCycle Press.