CLAMPDOWN AT DILLEY DETENTION CENTER

by Ellen Romano

Children detained at the immigrant family detention center in Dilley, Texas, speaking with ProPublica reporter Mica Rosenberg over video call. Clockwise from top left: Diana Crespo, Luka Mora, Juan Nicolas Mo, Alexander Perez, Amalia Arrieta, Mayra Delgado. Mica Rosenberg/ProPublica. Click here to donate to ProPublica.

 

Imagine the children’s drawings, 

a family of three, standing in a cage, 

a family of five, standing in a cage, their faces blank,

a family of seven lying down in a cage, labelled

with the words, me quiero ir,  I want to go home. 

 

Imagine the children’s letters,

We are kidnapped, help.

There’s an agent here, he’s watching us.

I can’t see Willi, accompanied by a picture of a pet cat.

 

On the day the art supplies are confiscated,

crayons, pencils, drawing paper,

the letters and pictures are seized as well,

portraits of friends, the tracing of a child’s hand,

tears and a frowning face in the palm,

even a five year-old’s picture of a peaked roof house,

lit from one corner by an inextinguishable sun.

 

One mother saves a handful of shredded pages,

all that is left of her daughter’s drawings. In a place

that is never warm enough, another mother hides

the drawings of as many children as she can

in the sleeves of her puffy jacket, carries them

everywhere. 

 

Imagine a government that tries to steal 

a child’s ability to imagine, imagine a five-year old

wearing a detention uniform, a replacement 

for the blue, bunny-eared jacket taken from him,

the conejo that shared his name,

 

imagine a child’s voice too dangerous to be heard,

though no louder than the sound

a crayon makes on a scrap of paper.

Author’s note: All descriptions of children's letters and art work were taken from various news articles except for the description of a five-year old's picture of a house, which as an elementary school educator I feel is quite typical.

Ellen Romano, she/her, is an educator, mother, grandmother, widow, and beekeeper living with her dog, Doc, in Hayward, California. She is the winner of Third Wednesday’s 2023 Poetry Prize, and won second place in Naugatuck River Review’s 2023 Narrative Poetry Contest. Other work has appeared in Lascaux Review, The Deadlands, december magazine, and other publications. 

BLACK AND WHITE

by Donna Katzin

for Peter Magubane

Born in Johannesburg in 1932, Peter Magubane documented the brutality of apartheid and suffered from banning orders, solitary confinement and beatings as a result. From teaching himself as a boy with a Brownie camera, he went on to work for the influential magazine Drum and became Nelson Mandela’s official photographer. He died on New Year’s Day aged 91.  Photo: The Soweto uprising on 16 June 1976, when more than 15,000 children protested against an editct making Afrikaans the medium of instruction in black schools. At first, the refused to be photographed but Magubane said a struggle without documentation was no struggle and they had to show the world what was going on in South Africa. The students agreed and this picture was taken by Peter Magubane. —The Guardian, January 12, 2024

With shadow and light

you engrave enduring images

in our collective consciousness,

lend us your eyes as microscope 

that bores deep beneath the skin,

telescope that scans beyond the stars.

 

Broken bodies scattered at your feet—

one camera concealed in a milk carton,

another in a loaf of bread or Bible—

you chronicle histories of struggle,

reveal the beast that lurks within

and humanity that is possible.

 

Confined to solitary

blocks of cold cement,

you do not let them hold

or break your indomitable will, 

bequeath your hammering heart

to our beleaguered world.

 

You squint far beyond the time

you have seeded with your vision,

reclaim the radiance of rainbows,

splendor of the setting sun,

knowing, somewhere,

it will rise again.

 

Donna Katzin has served as the founding and former executive director of Shared Interest, a 30 year old non-profit organization that facilitates access to credit for low-income Black Southern Africans. In that capacity, she was privileged to meet and collaborate with Peter Magubane, and honor him. She currently co-coordinates Tipitapa Partners, which helps feed impoverished children and empower their mothers in Nicaragua. She also serves on the Board of the Fund for Community Change, as well as the Tikun Olam Commission of Reconstructing Judaism—working on reparations in the U.S.  A proud wife and mother, she is a contributor to The New Verse News and author of With These Hands—poems about the "new" South Africa giving birth to itself.