MEDITERRANEAN CORRIDOR

by Joanne Kennedy Frazer

From January 2023 to August 2023, inclusive, the UNHCR records that 2,314 people have died or been declared missing at sea on Mediterranean migration routes; the IOM similarly recorded 2,324 deaths or disappearances over the same time. —Wikipedia

For these burials     at sea

   the dead      are not sewn into sail cloth

 

No ceremony     no one prays over them

 

Their boat      converts to casket

      submerges     to a mass grave

                their last refuge

Joanne Kennedy Frazer (Durham, NC) enjoys spending her silvering years writing poetry and publishing in numerous anthologies, journals, and ezines. She has written two chapbooks. Most recently, Seasonings (Kelsay Press).

ALL PARENTS WANT THEIR KIDS' DREAMS TO COME TRUE

by Tamara Kreutz

Foto Prensa Libre, July 17, 2022: Elmer Vargas

I.

Last Sunday at breakfast in San Martín, 

a Guatemalan bakery chain, my husband and I 

sipped our coffee and tea, as our three children 

raced up and down the indoor jungle gym.

While watching them, we thumbed through the paper. 

This story’s fucking awful, my husband said. 

The body of Juan Wilmer Tulul Tepaz, 

a fourteen-year-old Guatemalan boy who died (trapped 

in an abandoned truck in summer San Antonio heat)

was returned home to a village outside Sololá. 

The story showed pictures of his parents. The father’s 

hand covered weeping eyes as he sank into himself—

back bowed, arms pressing a crease in his middle.

The mother’s brow was squeezed into the shape

of a moth’s wings spread across her forehead.

She wore a purple huipil and a black bandana, 

and her hand caressed her son’s casket—the tips 

of her manicured fingers pressing into the wood, 

her thumb stroking the edge as she would her son’s cheek.

II.

My family just moved to Guatemala

to give our kids the life America 

couldn’t. Its dream had chewed us up, leaving the gnawed 

gristle of debt and burnout—the cost of gas

and rent and medical care. But in Guatemala, 

opportunity would unfold like a rug 

before our children’s feet—piano, dance, 

and horseback riding lessons—because the dollar

goes so much further here. In Guatemala,

I can pay someone to clean my house and watch my kids,

and if we’re sick and need labs, I won’t worry

the bills will hollow out our savings account. 

Our first day here, my toddler son locked himself 

into a second-story bedroom with an open 

window. He screamed for fifteen minutes, then went silent. 

I panicked, pounded the door, then raced out the house

and up and down the street, asking everyone 

I saw if they had tools to pick a lock—

until someone called the fire department.

Back in the house, I kicked the door, I paced, doubled

over, hunching in circles around the family room,

crying, I just want my baby back, now.

When the locksmith came with wires and screwdrivers

to take the doorknob off, and I finally burst through

to find my son sound asleep in bed, I pulled

his little body to my chest. He woke,

startled, but nestled his silky head under my chin,

and I felt his heart beat against mine. In the nine years 

I’ve been a mother, this was the first time

I couldn’t reach my child who needed me.

III.

I keep thinking about how I felt, locked away

from my son, wondering if he was hurt or even—

(I can’t bring myself to write it, I’ll leave the word 

unsaid). And I keep thinking about Juan Wilmer— 

the ten thousand dollars his parents paid 

the coyote for safe transport, his dream 

of education, the pictures of him alive 

and smiling placed on the family altar.

I keep thinking about his mother’s hand

that clutched his casket, her fingers spreading 

over its edge—exactly how my hand

had clutched the arm of my live and dreaming child.

Tamara Kreutz is an English Language Arts teacher and a poet who resides in Antigua, Guatemala. She began writing poetry early in the pandemic, and through poetry, she found order, peace, and joy in a turbulent, uncertain time.

WHITEWASHED

by Betsy Mars

Ahmaud Arbery falls to the ground after being shot.

When you want a commodity, a spokesman,
team spirit, sales soaring, think fast,
think brawn, think black.

Think pounding pavement. Think
of those hard-earned calves jumping
on command. Think of a casket.

I mean a basket. A hoop, rope
hanging from its neck.
Think of a shot, circling the rim,

going down as the buzzard, I mean
buzzer, ends the game. If you train off-court
or just enjoy a runner's high, I'm sorry.

Be prepared to run, to shoulder the blame—
a steal from behind—as your muscles
strain, push off on defense. Find the hole,

cut inside. Man-to-man or zone, you don't
stand a chance. They've got the big guns,
the refs in their pocket.

Betsy Mars is a prize-winning poet, educator, photographer, and recent publisher whose first release, Unsheathed: 24 Contemporary Poets Take Up the Knife, came out in October 2019. Her work has appeared in Kissing Dynamite, The Blue Nib, Poetry Super Highway, and Rattle (photography), to name a few, as well as in a number of anthologies. Her first chapbook Alinea (Picture Show Press), came out in January 2019. Her father was a professor and her mother was a social worker, and their progressive beliefs as well as her childhood years in Brazil deeply influenced her values. Her passions are language, travel, and animals; the latter two often conflict as her pets prefer she stay at home. 

TO LIE IN STATE, AS USUAL

by David Feela

Years down the political road
an ex-con will be carried to the rotunda
by military men at taxpayers’ expense

though he never served a day in uniform.
Mourners will respectfully file past his remains
though never in his life did he lawfully

file his taxes, wash his hands at humanity’s
fountain, or recognize a truth before
wringing out a lie. A closed casket affair,

nobody certain if he’s actually in there,
his supporters aghast, as a democrat is
accused of raising the flag to full staff.


David Feela writes a monthly column for The Four Corners Free Press and for The Durango Telegraph. A poetry chapbook Thought Experiments won the Southwest Poet Series. The Home Atlas appeared in 2009. A collection of his essays How Delicate These Arches was a finalist for the Colorado Book Award. Unsolicited Press released his newest chapbook Little Acres in April 2019.

A MODEST PROPOSAL

by Michael Eddie Anderson

There had been warnings, but no one imagined this could happen. For weeks, two rival factions battled it out on Chicago's South Side. One shooting left the mother of a gang member wounded and her 25-year-old son dead. A few days later, a young woman sitting in a car was fatally shot. With tensions high, outreach workers for CeaseFire traded bits of information and huddled with gang members to try to untangle the conflicts. But the execution of 9-year-old Tyshawn Lee in an alley by 80th Street and Damen Avenue in early November was nothing anyone — not the most seasoned cops, not former longtime gang members — would have ever predicted. In Chicago's long, troubled history of gang violence, children have far too often been the victims of stray bullets meant for others, but authorities allege Tyshawn was lured from a park and fatally shot because of his father's alleged gang ties. —Chicago Tribune, Dec. 1, 2015

for Tyshawn Lee

In a good world
the nine-year-old boy would get a haircut,
would get a double-breasted white tuxedo,
matching white cotton gloves,
a red bow tie,
a red boutonnière at the lapel—
also a bright red fedora
crowning the little casket, fire-engine red,
which is wiped with Lysol
and polished clean
as the mourners queue up
on the sidewalk
in a long line
because in a good world
such a line would be long.


Michael Eddie Anderson has worked as an editor at Rhino: the Poetry Journal and now serves on their advisory board. His poetry has appeared in Rhino, Pen Woman Magazine, and the recent Poet and Artist Chapbook of the Northwest Cultural Council. Anderson lives in Evanston, Illinois.