BUCK KLEIN AND THE IMMIGRATION JUDGE

by Dana Yost

CNN, September 28, 2026

Where i grew up,
there was an old man
in a long black coat
and a derby hat.
He slumped, slouched
along streets and
hallways. A church warden,
but not a creep,
though, There to make
sure we kids did the right
thing—that we acted
with decency, respect,
that we cared about
the small town where
we lived. A role model,
if dressed a bit weirdly.
Now, i read about a judge
making threats against
little boys—threatening
to ruin their lives,
to split them from families,
to ship them to countries
where they know no one,
where it’s possible
they will be trafficked
or killed. It’s true.
I’ve read the courthouse
transcripts. This time,
creep is the right word.
I think about the class
I took my freshman
year in college: a study
of the Nazi regime,
the guts of it,
how men became
desensitiezed to the plight
of others, how the lives
of others became
as disposable as my
mother’s empty lighter.
Have we slid into
that sort of nation,
letting judges tell 
kids they have the power
to destroy them? 
The old man in the long
coat of my childhood
would gather
children, give them
shovels and hoes,
have them clean
a patch of weedy
sidewalk, scrape bird
shit off the side of the church.
We’d know it was the right
thing to do: to make the place
look better, because
it was our home.
He spoke gently to us,
but he’d take this judge
in Texas by the throat,
push him to his knees
and say, here,
pull the weeds from the cracks
of the sidewalk, leave
the children alone.
Is that true?
or is it what I want
to be true?
Let’s say it’s both,
Let’s say there is still
some adult who cares
about morality,
the moral high ground
in this country of fast money 
and power-grubbers,
and if that sounds
preachy, then I guess
it does. His name
was Buck Klein
it was it was
it was. Maybe I’ll
drive to Texas
and start a spray-painting
campaign on the bridges
and roads and sides
of courthouses:
Buck Klein lives,
he does, he does,
and judges who do not
know this should
lose their jobs,
should be sentenced
to 40 days on a playground,
learning to care
what becomes
of the children.

Dana Yost is a former daily newspaper editor and writer. He has had 10 books published since 2008 and is a three-time Pushcart nominee. He lives in Sioux Falls, S.D., trying to stay blue in a very red state.

AT THE VIGIL

by Jac-Lynn Stark 

On an evening when dark clouds 

forming overhead threaten to release 

their tears down to this world

I venture out to Lynn District Court

to gather with others who care about people 

of this city abducted at traffic stops 

on their way to work or in 

some other every day situation that 

most of us don’t have to fear

at least not yet

 

Earlier that day I lurked in courthouse hallways

observing two men who looked oh so ordinary

in their jeans and khakis, t-shirts, sneakers

but we know who they work for and why they are here

we know their license plates and their objectives

we know the violence within them 

that I watched on recordings a woman I met showed me

 

Now groups of us gather under gloomy skies

a mix of skin color and languages

of ages and experiences 

from a variety of neighborhoods

 

A long table holds photographs of men 

whose wives are now alone

whose children miss their fathers

candles and flowers adorn this table of sorrow

as we witness people telling their stories

 

One young woman gets up to speak

two children holding her hands

her pink-clad daughter hides shyly behind her

her 11-year-old son strong and serious next to her

in his white t-shirt that says Let’s Taco About It

he takes the microphone and talks about his father

how much he misses him

how worried he is

he thanks us for being there

 

Oh young warrior, only 11, but not afraid to speak up

I think of my grandparents leaving Poland

I think of the poem on the Statue of Liberty:

“give me your tired, your poor,

your huddled masses yearning to breathe free…”

I think of these lines from Warsan Shire: 

“no one leaves home unless
home is the mouth of a shark”

 

Oh America, what have we become?

 

 

Jac-Lynn Stark was born in the Bronx and lives north of Boston where she enjoys pondering life either from near the ocean or in the woods. She recently retired from 14 years of teaching English at Bunker Hill Community College in Boston. Her work has been published in Maintenant 19, A Journal of Dada Writing and Art; Orange is not a colour, Poems against totalitarianism; American Graveyard, calls to end gun violence, and others. She is a proud granddaughter of immigrants and a volunteer with LUCE Immigrant Justice Network of Massachusetts.

SONNET FOR THE COMPTROLLER

by Beth Cleary

He is showing us what to say, how to be, when
they come for us: upright, measured in tone and gaze,
Do you have a judicial warrant? You do not have 
the authority to arrest U.S. citizens. Show me
your judicial warrant. These are the ways, the phrases,
memorize them. I have memorized them, in the night
when footage of the arrest—I am not
obstructing anything I am standing here—replays
in the basement of my heart, near where my diaphragm
tucks up, presses down, basement where I store
cups, snippets, grains of information, instructions
for later. For when they come for us, soft body and cheek
jammed against a pillow/wall, gloved hands breaking our backs.

Beth Cleary's essays and poems appear in Ninth Letter, The Maine Review, Artist & Influence, Fourth Genre, and other publications. She lives in St. Paul, Minnesota, where the main No Kings! march was upwards of 60,000 strong despite shock about assassinations, unknowns about an active shooter, and warnings to stay away. 

MAUI BANYAN

by Amy Barone

Home to chatty mynah birds, you flank 
the Old Lahaina Courthouse by the ocean
 
on an island of sugar cane hills, Hana sunsets,
historic red wood buildings and Ka’anapali Beach.
 
Stretching nearly two acres with 16 trunks,
cousin to the fig tree, hub for Maui’s
 
huge Halloween party and costume parade,
you star as stage and shelter for natives and tourists.
 
A century and a half old, now survivor of brutal wildfires 
that charred cars and an enchanting town that I first visited
 
as a wide-eyed teen on vacation, marveling at your vastness, 
that paradise exists in an old whaling village in the USA.

Amy Barone’s poetry collection Defying Extinction was published by Broadstone Books in 2022. New York Quarterly Books published her book We Became Summer. She wrote chapbooks Kamikaze Dance (Finishing Line Press) and Views from the Driveway(Foothills Publishing.) Barone belongs to the Poetry Society of America. She lives in New York City.

A GOD-GIVEN RIGHT

by Mike Mesterton-Gibbons

Giving the middle finger is a “God-given right,” Canadian judge rules. —The Guardian, March 10, 2023

A judge has ruled that if you are Canuck,

God gave to you a fundamental right

Of self-expression: use what rhymes with duck,

Deployed with off. Although it's not polite,

Good manners maketh not the man who gets

Insulted by a neighbour with a grudge

Vindictively repeating epithets

Expressing scorn. According to the judge,

No crime's committed if you flip the bird,

Rebuffing smears. In all his decades while

In court, no feebler case was ever heard:

Good sense, he said, would see the case's file

Hurled out the window——but, in Montreal,

The courthouse has no windows, none at all!

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.