THEY

by Jim Hanson

Cartoon by Ann Telnaes

They’re running it, ruining it
off the rails, in the ditch
sell the wreckage, get rich.

Truth killed, collateral causality
lies arise, as reality
deftly made, as cool aide.

Dollar inflated, debt escalated
hyper crypto, value to go
assets bereft, nothing left.

Empire today, for USA
Greenland now, Canada then
Ukraine to lose, Russia to win.

Love incarnate, just for the lust
Epstein teens, Trump playboy queens
sex for pay, with NDA.

Immigrants, detention camps
hit squads, brown shirts worn black
dream children here, sent back.

Justice ignored, polls soared
guilty of crime, no time
impeachment twice made, still stayed.

Troops march, mayors watch
cities, occupied
politics, on wrong side.

Money sought, elections bought
billionaires gave, taxes to waive
offices for sale, free from jail.

Republicans scared, of primary loss
all bow down, to the MAGA boss
funny money, from dark accounts.

Legacy seen, power absolute
pride resolute, for life to be
none than, the presidency.

Jim Hanson is a retired university researcher and sociologist who lives in the St. Louis area. He has published four poetry collections, also some thirty single poems, and is a member of the St. Louis Poetry Center and Illinois State Poetry Society Southern Chapter.

HEAT-STROKE

by David Chorlton

There’s a picture postcard sunrise
back of the apartments
at 48^th and Warner
and a fire truck in the parking lot. Smoke on the second storey,
three bodies, no clues, this neighborhood is zoned
for stillness in the afternoon. Water
for the sparrows, suet for the doves, a whole sky for the hawk
who flew through the yard this morning.
A hummingbird drinks light,
the sun drinks desert
and the desert drinks a hundred years
of silence in a single gulp.
 
*
Dustbathing quail in a hollow; eight half-grown
and one adult, each
with a tremble in its throat. Two flickers
on the tallest palm, a hundred
degrees high and climbing. 
Night on its way, the rabbits are out
to listen for darkness. Sure enough, it’s crossing
the ridge now, leaving nothing
but the bones of light behind. 2:20 a.m. reports
of swimming pool shots,
monsoon clouds arguing again, no arrests
are made.
 
*
An evening when homicide
hangs between the trees
and stops halfway along the path
to where a hawk’s nest is woven into the wind
the sky turns suddenly electric.
All the stars are flashing.
City lights behind the mountain,
Heaven’s rain falling
and thunder wipes the darkness clean.

David Chorlton has long been at home in Phoenix. He has a forthcoming book from The Bitter Oleander Press, Dreams the Stones Have, dedicated to the desert. 

SIGN OF THE TIMES

by Lisa Seidenberg

Woman found living in Family Fare sign in Midland, Michigan for almost a year.

It had a roof and a door

space for a laptop and clothes

electric kettle, plant and more

in her improvised home

above the big box store.

warmed on chill Michigan nights

wrapped in rays of a red neon sign 

while unseeing shoppers passed below 

What thoughts crossed her mind

as she lay perched behind the sign;

Is it a crime to be homeless in America?

settlers came to this land 

with only their hands

and some tools and their wits

making up the rules of wrong

and right as survival

is the primal law

not simply a need for shelter

led her to this penthouse nest. 

living for a year like a stealthy mountaineer

scaling the crest of Family Fare. 

a temporary home.

a summit of her own.

Lisa Seidenberg is a writer and filmmaker who makes documentaries and poetry films. She enjoys reading poems on the Rattlecast and other poetry performance venues. 

DESPITE MANY EDITS, THIS POEM REMAINS A SCREED

by Devon Balwit

Martin Keep/Agence France-Presse—Getty Images via The New York Times

 

Individualized animal abuse is a crime; systematic animal abuse is a business model. —Nicholas Kristof, The New York Times, June 10, 2023

 

What we can’t bear to look at, we tolerate hidden:

the living penned with the dead, vivisection,

 

infants torn from their mothers. Already, I imagine

you, reader, lamenting this poem’s wanton

 

cruelty. Or protesting that you don’t eat red

meat or chicken flesh and so aren’t implicated .

 

Unfortunately, milk and cheese also equal

death. I wish it weren’t so, for I was partial

 

to Gouda—and eggs—but the free range birds

we imagine exist mostly in our heads. Farmyards

 

would span entire states were the hens to peck

at will. Back we retreat, then, into our dark

 

ages, some fated to suffer in a preordained hierarchy.

We’d squirm if this logic were applied to our species:

 

Women, brown people, the poor—What

can one do? They just happened to draw the short

 

straw. Surely, mere appetite can be retrained

once we admit animals know pleasure and pain.

 

Devon Balwit walks in all weather. In her most recent collection Spirit Spout [Nixes Mate Books, 2023] she romps through Melville’s Moby Dick. 

DOES TIME HAVE COLOR TOO?

by L. Smith

Disgraced Minnesota police officer Kim Potter walked free from prison after serving just 16 months for shooting dead Daunte Wright when she mistook her gun for a Taser during a traffic stop. Potter, 50, was released from Minnesota Correctional Facility-Shakopee in the early hours of Monday morning to serve the remainder of her sentence on supervised release. —The Independent (UK), April 24, 2023

So, does time have color, too?

Why do they get less time for the same offense that, say, we might do?

Is their time more valuable than, say, mine?

I mean, ain’t we living on the same clock? Same timeline? Same century?

Maybe we need to leave the time up to the jury, because the judge is too easily nudged by emotion. Are you sentencing the crime, or are you sentencing the color? Are you sentencing the crime, or are you crying for a mother? Are you sentencing the crime, or are you sympathetic to the other?

 

Is one color more fragile than the other? You know the phrase, right? —"Don’t do the crime,

if you can’t do the time.” Does that not apply for every color?

What? Y’all think we got a time machine? Think time go by for us at warp speed?

Is time not supposed to affect the brother like it does the other?

Y’all don’t age the same, but them years don’t go by no faster for us.

We age on different scales, but them years go by the same. 

 

I thought time was about alignment, about the crime,

about time to match the crime—not the color. Not how sullen one is once seized.

But it seems the brother gets more time than the other because of his color.

Does color determine risk? After all, who has the means to take the most risk?

The brother? Or the other?

 

Or is it: don’t do the crime, unless you got the right color? 

I mean, can y’all meet us in today? Can we at least decide time like we living in the same decade?

Whose family will suffer most under the cloak of the time?

During the absences, the voids, the gaps, the setbacks brought on by the time? Whose family is already behind?

 

Why can’t white time and black time be on the same damn black line?

I didn’t know time had color, too.

I guess time, like fairness, are both abstract, are just a construct. 

Time being obstruct for the fair-skinned,

abundant for the brother, but absent, lightened, or lifted for the other.

Intangible for the other, hard-lived for the brother.

Time itself is colored obtuse.

Color makes time profuse.

For the colored, time is abused.

And in today, time is a noose.

I didn’t know time had color, too.

And since it does, why can’t our time have the color of you?

L. Smith, a New Orleans native, is a writer, multi-certified, English and master reading teacher, who has freelanced for local newspapers. Her poems “Black Man Running” and “Worse Than Rodney King” have also been published in The New Verse News. She has an anthology of poems and prose set to publish spring 2023 that her mother and daughter created space for her to write. She also has begun this blog for writer teachers.

THE SHOW-ME STATE GOES ROGUE

by George Salamon

"In Missouri, a new state law that took effect on 1 January makes it a crime for any person to sleep on state property. For unhoused people, sleeping in public parks or under city highways could mean up to $750 in fines or 15 days in prison for multiple offenses." —The Guardian, January 5, 2023. Photo: An unhoused person in Los Angeles. Photograph: David Swanson/AFP/Getty Images via The Guardian.

Homelessness is a crime

in the state of Missouri,

where sleeping on the 

street is not punishment 

enough for so capital a sin 

by those who belong in a

loony bin for the criminally

cruel and heartless, claiming

the voices in their heads

are those of God or Jesus,

without even being facetious.

George Salamon thinks he sees where this is going. As Richard T. Evans pointed out in The German Underworld. Deviants and Outcasts in German History (1988): "The Nazis planned their first big round-up of the homeless as soon as they came to power."

DANGEROUS

by Dana Yost

The Globe and Mail

Excuse me

but this is dangerous

work,

writing in a time like

this, a time when words

get twisted and torn,

not believed, turned

into political device.

U don’t mind being

a political device,

but with my own words

my way,

not picked up

by a politician

and run through

a damned 

microphone

in front of 4,000

flag-waving

believers

of non-belief.

There is a man

outside on the street

wearing a stocking hat

and long-sleeved shirt

blowing hard in the afternoon

wind. Is he spying 

on someone or just sitting

on the bench

waiting for his children

to come outside?

It is sights like

this that stoke 

paranoia, of course,

in the left and the right.

But damaging a man’s

skull is something 

no one should

accept or mock

or use to rally

the charges.

It’s sad

and sickening

and a crime

and that’s what

it is and, there,

I’ve said it—a crime

fueled by rhetoric,

and the grocery clerks

and taxi drivers

in this town will

either agree

or hate me.

This is dangerous

to be a writer

today, to say

what is ugly,

to say it

plain,

to walk

on downtown

sidewalks

books lunging

out of my coat

pockets

because there

are men with guns

who don’t know

how to use them

but think they do.

Dana Yost was an award-winning daily newspaper editor and writer for twenty-nine years. Since 2008, he has published eight books and been nominated for three Pushcart Prizes in poetry. His poetry has appeared in several reviews, magazines and other publications, including previously in The New Verse News.

FRONT LINES

by Eileen Ivey Sirota

The governor of Alabama on Friday signed into law two controversial bills: one that criminalizes healthcare providers who offer gender-affirming care to transgender youth and another that requires students to use bathrooms that match the gender on their birth certificates. Kay Ivey, a Republican, said she “believed very strongly that if the Good Lord made you a boy, you are a boy, and if he made you a girl, you are a girl”. The anti-gender-affirming care bill, described as the first legislation of its kind in the US, makes it a felony punishable by up to 10 years in prison to provide medical care including hormone treatment and puberty blockers to minors. It also includes bans on gender-affirming surgeries for transgender youth, which are extremely rare, and compels school personnel to disclose to a parent or guardian that a “minor’s perception of his or her gender or sex is inconsistent with the minor’s sex”. —The Guardian, April 8, 2022

We will fight them on the

beaches    we will fight them in

 

the sandbox    these tiny

terrorists, the little boys

 

with nail polish, a spangly pony

and a special Barbie.

 

We have God on our side

He who surely must have sanctified

 

the hand of the doctor filling out

the birth certificate.  We have

 

George Orwell on our side to

inspire our marketing team.

 

We’ll call it de-nazification, no,

we’ll call it parental support, no,

 

wait, we’ll call it The Vulnerable Child

Compassion and Protection Act.

 

No more shelter in the demilitarized

school nurse’s office.  We’ll make It a crime

 

to slow the inexorable hands of time

bringing forth an unwanted body.

 

In this holy war

No prisoners are too small.

 

Eileen Ivey Sirota is a psychotherapist and a poet.  Her chapbook Out of Order was published by Finishing Line Press in 2020.  Her poems have been published in District Lines, Beltway Poetry Quarterly, Lighten Up, The New Verse News, Ekphrastic Review, The Poeming Pigeon, Calyx, and Voices:  The Art and Science of Psychotherapy. She lives in Bethesda, MD with her husband and an ever-shifting blend of rage and wonder.

NEW YEAR RESOLUTION

by Geoffrey Philp

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has issued level 4 and level 2 travel advisories for Jamaica which sees them strongly warning against travel into the country due to several factors including Covid-19 and violence which has plagued some areas. —YardHype, January 12, 2022. See also CDC, January 10, 2022

The CDC has updated their travel advisory

to Jamaica due to crime, the spread of Covid,

and a lack of police presence in the county.

 

They’ve suggested avoiding public buses or secluded

places and added to statistics of robberies and break-

ins, a rising positivity rate. Fully vaccinated,

 

boostered, and up-to-date on flu shots I’ll take

my survival odds on the island this winter.

You see, America, I need a long-deserved break

 

from my daily rehearsal of answers to policemen

with the tiresome, “Who are you? Why are you here?”

usually by some rookie hoping to make his bones

 

with an exotic trophy in the trunk of his squad car

where he’ll pose with his first kill of the New Year.

Geoffrey Philp is the author of five books of poetry, two collections of short stories, three children’s books, and two novels, including Garvey’s Ghost. His poems and short stories have been published in The Oxford Book of Caribbean Verse, sx salon, World Literature Today, The Johannesburg Review of Books, The Oxford Book of Caribbean Short Stories, Bearden’s Odyssey Poets Respond to the Art of Romare Bearden, Rattle: Poets Respond, and Crab Orchard Review. A recipient of the Luminary Award from the Consulate of Jamaica (2015) and a former chair for the 2019 OCM Bocas Prize for Poetry, Philp’s work is featured on The Poetry Rail at The Betsy—an homage to 12 writers that shaped Miami culture. His next collection of poems, Archipelagos, is forthcoming from Peepal Tree Press.

AFRAID

by stella graham-landau

we did not learn 

at the police academy

how to handle traffic leaving costco

while navigating people running in the street carrying pet cats

when the world is burning before our eyes

nor was there a module in crime prevention on 

how to tell the difference between a masked customer

or a masked bandit

and how to stay healthy in either case

in crime scene management

we were only taught a prayer

to deal with multiple mass shooters in a mall

“you better pray that it’s just one shooter and that their gun jams”

on a regular december day in boulder 

with no snow on the ground

an ordinary man

on an ordinary task to buy soup for his sick wife 

knew how bad things were

not from the dense smoke blocking the sky

nor the galloping customers racing to their cars

not even the screams of children being dragged to safety

but the face of the police officer

directing traffic

with fear in his eyes

stella graham-landau is an artist and writer living in richmond, va. she is vaccinated, boosted, masked, and insistently optimistic that we will emerge as better, kinder citizens of the global village.

ON BUOYANCY

by Julie Steiner

Look for the helpers, Mister Rogers said.

Whenever you feel sad or scared about

the news, look for the people helping out.

Keep those within your sight. Your heart. Your head.

It’s good advice. On days when all I’ve read

puts basic human decency in doubt,

and all I’ve heard’s what hurtful people shout,

I focus on the helpful folks instead.

Or try to. Sometimes all that’s in the frame

is evidence that helpers never came.

Two long, light-gray balloons, like downturned lips,

say several states withheld their rescue ships.

No helpers in the picture. Not this time.

But you can help bear witness to this crime.

A shipwreck off the Libyan coast has reportedly claimed the lives of 130 people, despite SOS calls for help, the UN migration agency IOM said on Friday [April 23]. The tragedy was confirmed late on Thursday by the volunteer rescue vessel Ocean Viking, which found dozens of bodies floating in the water northeast of Tripoli. It had been in distress since Wednesday morning, the NGO said in a statement. IOM spokesperson, Safa Msehli, told journalists in Geneva that the victims had been on board a rubber dinghy for two days before it sank in the central Mediterranean. “For two days, the NGO alarm phone, which is responsible for sending distress calls to the relevant maritime rescue centres in the region, has been calling on States to uphold their responsibilities towards these people and send rescue vessels. Unfortunately, that has not happened.” More than 500 people have drowned on the so-called Central Mediterranean sea route this year according to IOM—almost three times as many the same period last year. —UN News, April 23, 2021

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

CRIME SCENE

by Ilene Millman

“Taking Stock” by Keith Knight at The Nib.

If I were collecting evidence

wouldn’t I look at the tire tracks

tracing broken distances

living to dead

in stock dividends and expense accounts—

who has the motive—they who look like citizens

changing the map

leaving no forwarding address?

 

If I were collecting evidence

wouldn’t I analyze photographs,

video recordings, tweets

brittle as promises

and autopsy the bones

cracked like hope

and stacked deep

in boxes of discord?

 

If I were the one collecting evidence

shouldn’t I unpack the fingerprints

floating fibers, strands of hair

from the briefcases of influence

brushing what’s there to see

and lay them end to end

across this current carnage—

a measure of the outstretched fingers of God

or the smallest fisted hand?

 

 

In addition to writing poetry, Ilene Millman is a speech/language therapist currently working with school aged children and volunteering as tutor, tutor trainer and assessor for her county Literacy Volunteers organization. Her poems have been published in a number of print journals including The Journal of New Jersey Poets, Nelle, Connecticut Review, Paterson Review, Passager and anthologized in several volumes including the recently published Show Me Your Papers. She is an associate editor of The Sow’s Ear. Her first book of poetry Adjust Speed to Weather was published in 2018. 

OLD MCDONALD

by Mickey J. Corrigan

Art by Zelley

destroys his own farm

blind eye on the golden hay

clumsily embarking on a sweep

of dirt under fields and rugs 

fistfuls hidden, tossed away

the swamp calm beneath blue skies

and the swell of a flood tide

bearing an economy of crime

bears down, drowns the land.

And there he stands, proud 

pitchfork in one pale hand

flash suit over excessive flesh

his minions and puppets

whiplashed and soft-focused

in the brilliance of a gilt sheen

he has shed the dark cloak

and revealed a plastic heart

that does not beat in tandem,

a harvest plan that starves,

feeding neither bodies nor souls

but the infantile emotional self-

interest of the greedy animal

chowing down fantasy food

and golden age TV dreams 

of power and wealth only

silly fictions bring to life.

From the top of the silo

fake this, false that

the poor garden at his feet

the sick and dying, lost

trampled down, laid out

in a stink pile of manure

his arrogant gaze pitiless

as the Florida sun

burning to a crusty char

all of it,

all that so many

worked so long, so hard 

to plant, tend, grow.

Originally from Boston, Mickey J. Corrigan writes Florida noir with a dark humor. Novels include  Project XX about a school shooting (Salt Publishing, UK, 2017) and What I Did for Love a spoof of Lolita (Bloodhound Books, 2019). Kelsay Books recently published the poetry chapbook the disappearing self. Grandma Moses Press will publish the poetry chapbook Florida Man later this year. 

I PLEDGE ALLEGIANCE TO THE IDIOCRACY

by Mickey J. Corrigan

Sign at Women's March, January 21, 2017 via diggit

"God grant that men of principle be our principal men."

—Thomas Jefferson

Idiocracy is claiming you are the king
of reality, seeking only ratings
while the rest of us
let the show go on.

Idiocracy is becoming your own smoke-
filled room, your attraction
to wrong-doing unabated
as supporters compromise
integrity on demand.

Idiocracy is having thousands of points of entry
to you
through your businesses
and no one sticks a finger
in that holey dike.

Idiocracy is allowing a transactional businessman
to run the country like a mafia state
while the rest of us watch reruns
of The Sopranos.

Idiocracy is riding the rollercoaster
of presidential whims
ignoring the vast scope
of your childish unruliness.

Idiocracy is standing by
while you self-ignite
self-inflicted crises
daily, glorified
babysitters for the biggest
crybaby in the history
of our crumbling world.

We live in an idiocracy
our government run by loyalists
where narcissism and hegemony,
hateful groupthink,
one-size-fits-all cowardice,
dangerous stupidity
and the end of democracy
being neither
indictable crime nor
impeachable offense
are okay with us.

Originally from Boston, Mickey J. Corrigan writes Florida noir with a dark humor. Her books have been released by publishers in the US, UK, Canada, and Australia.  Project XX, a satirical crime novel, was released in 2017 by Salt Publishing in the UK. What I Did for Love was released by Bloodhound Books in October. Kelsay Books is publishing the poetry chapbook the disappearing self in 2020. 

FLORIDA MAN TO DOMICILE IN FLORIDA

by Mickey J. Corrigan

Cartoon by Dave Granlund

He's on the move
on paper
to the joke state
the harboring state
the hideout state
where he thinks
he blends in better

where the climate is better
for taxes
the climate is better
for asset protection
dodging creditors
hiding dodgy wealth
in protected real estate

—he knows more than anyone
about everything
real estate—

where the climate is better
for laundering
the climate is better
for white collar crime
for avoiding
your dues
—no cap
on deductions
no state tax
on income—
no one cares
what you've done

for a certificate
of domicile
when you live in DC
your business
in New York
you vote
for yourself

in Florida            
a thousand new residents
arrive daily
—immigrants across borders
families from cages
babies without parents—
plus Florida Man:

can we lock him up
so the climate is better
for the rest of us?

Originally from Boston, Mickey J. Corrigan writes Florida noir with a dark humor. Project XX, a satirical novel about a school shooting, was released in 2017 by Salt Publishing in the UK. Newest release is What I Did for Love, a spoof of Lolita (Bloodhound Books, October, 2019).

GHOST LIGHT

by Kelley White

We settle into worship. Is it better to pray—
or to listen for the voice of God?

Is it better to wait on God
with eyes closed, cast down, or open to light?

I seek light in the meetinghouse’s tall
windows, the faces of gathered friends—

when Jondhi breaks Quaker silence to speak
of the Nicetown shootings we all know

it is too real—his, our, Healing and Transformation
Center, the Center for Returning Citizens

is a block from the crime scene.
He heard the sirens, he saw the masses

of police, the stunned neighbors, children
evacuated from day care centers.

He asks about community. About
the roots of drug crime. Fear. Economics.

Unemployment. I close my eyes. The ghost
light of the windows a negative beneath my lids. Then

D., who like Jondhi has done serious time, lifts his
walking stick to his lips: I see it

decorated with feathers and red paint, a line of holes
punched along its shaft—

and it is actually a flute, with a voice so pure and deep
it returns me to silence, to my lit darkness, truce.


Author’s Note: J. Jondhi Harrell is the Founder and Executive Director of The Center for Returning Citizens (TCRC) in Philadelphia. Twitter: @JondhiTCRC . “D.” is a pseudonym.

Kelley White, a member of Germantown Friends Meeting is a pediatrician working about 2 miles from the ‘active shooter incident’ this past Wednesday, August 14, in Philadelphia’s Nicetown neighborhood.

LET US BE VERY CLEAR

by Kathryn Silver-Hajo

Image source: From Words to Deeds

If we’d had confidence that
a crime was not committed
we would have said so

If we’d had confidence that
a crime was committed
we would not have said so

because that would be unfair
because if a crime was committed
justice would not be brought
because the justice department
doesn’t do that kind of justice although

No one is above the law
and the law is above no one who
is above the law because
That is someone else’s job
and that someone else

would like the discussion to end because
Bringing the one who is above the law
below the law would be
a distraction
from the law-making agenda
And it’s just. not. worth it

Kathryn Silver-Hajo studied in the MFA program at Emerson College and at Grub Street Writers in Boston. While seeking representation for her recently completed novel Four Swirls of Ink she is working on a collection of poems and short stories and is headed to the Spannocchia Writers’ Workshop in Tuscany this summer. Her poem Beirut-Tripoli Highway at Rush Hour is forthcoming this fall in Rusted Radishes.

FACING YOUR OFFICIAL END

by Mickey J. Corrigan

Tweeted by Connecticut Congressman Jim Himes.

Some men aren't content with breakage, they have to burn you to the ground.

—Kim Addonizio, "The Matter"

The moon hangs there
like everything is white
in your world.

The sun bobs and rises
from the orange sherbet horizon
as if today
will be another
beautiful day.

The headlines blinker
across sky blue screens
in hectic offices
on crowded planes, trains
in cars with distracted drivers.

All that light reveals
more darkness
in the marrow,
more dirt unearthed
from the bottomless pit
the grave, the bone cancer
of past and present
crime, amorality, lies.

By the time the moon eases
from behind the black trees
the world has darkened again.
Only the night glow
casts light
on your tomorrow.

Originally from Boston, Mickey J. Corrigan writes Florida noir with a dark humor. Poetry has appeared in Fourth & Sycamore, Flatbush Review, And So Yeah, Penny Ante Feud, ink sweat and tears, r.kv.r.y quarterly literary journal, Scrittura, Fauna Quarterly, borrowed solace, TheNewVerse.News, and elsewhere. Chapbooks include The Art of Bars (Finishing Line Press, 2016), Days' End (Main Street Rag Publishing, 2017), and Final Arrangements (Prolific Press, 2019). Project XX, a novel about a school shooting, was published in 2017 by Salt Publishing in the UK.

THIRST

by Mary K O'Melveny

FOUR NO MORE DEATHS VOLUNTEERS FOUND GUILTY FOR PROVIDING LIFE-SAVING HUMANITARIAN AID ON “TRAIL OF DEATH” IN ARIZONA DESERT —No More Deaths, January 18, 2019

I.
What do most of us know of it?
Safe in our homes, cars, streets, sidewalks.
Plastic water bottles piled up,
filling the bellies of sperm whales.

We are half filled with liquids. Yet,
when water vanishes in an
eye blink, thirst is just death’s first sign.
A face reddens. A tongue swells. Limbs

cool, cramp. A brain aches. Eyes sink,
as if they might find liquids still
sloshing about under shrinking skin.
Deluge dreams become delusions.


II.
An Arizona desert turns crime scene.
Not because bodies of immigrants
lie scattered about, bone-thin hands
still clutching their rosaries,

but because someone has placed jugs
of water, cans of beans along
a ragged trail hoping to stave
off more gruesome deaths.

Four women may spend prison time
for desecration of a refuge.
Their water cans ran afoul of
the pristine nature of the place.

III.
Perhaps bodies gathering dust
along an arroyo where final
prayers for salvation once formed
do not amount to misdemeanors.

As dying travelers shed hats,
shirts, backpacks, photographs, sandals,
rangers scooped up remnants of lost
lives like so much tourist trash.

There is no one left to pay fines
for property abandonment
except earnest water bearers.
Our thirst for punishment wins out.


Mary K O'Melveny is a recently retired labor rights attorney who lives in Washington DC and Woodstock NY.  Her work has appeared in various print and on-line journals. Her first poetry chapbook A Woman of a Certain Age is available from Finishing Line Press.

A SYSTEM

by Gary Beck

“In the United States of America there are companies that profit if you go to jail. These corporations spent over $45 million in lobbying to make sure when you get sent to jail, you go to their jails. They are so good at this that there was a 40% increase of private prison detainees between 2002-2012. They are currently outpacing state and federally funded prisons. Yet there is no evidence that there are any savings in the use of private prisons. . . . Stewart Detention Center (SDC) in Lumpkin, Georgia, is one of the largest immigration detention facilities in the United States with the capacity to jail 1,752 people. Although the facility is owned by Stewart County and is contracted as an IGSA (Intergovernmental Service Agreements), the facility is actually operated by CCA. SDC houses immigration violation detainees who are mainly Hispanic, from Georgia, North Carolina and South Carolina and had the highest count of inmates partly because of its capacity. Immigrations and Customs Enforcement agents detain men, women and children suspected of violating civil immigration laws at these facilities. Most of those held at the 250 sites nationwide are illegal immigrants awaiting deportation, but some green card holders, asylum seekers and others are also there. A recent report on conditions in immigrant detention centers such as Stewart finds a systematic and ongoing failure by the government to adequately inspect facilities run by public and private contractors. The report entitled 'Lives in Peril: How Ineffective Inspections Make ICE Complicit in Immigration Detention Abuse,' alleges a pattern of basic human rights violations leading to deaths, suicides, violence and sexual assaults in facilities that were given a clean bill of health by federal inspectors.” —Father Jeremiah J. McCarthy, Southern Cross, March 16, 2016

While Chris Matthews grilled Trump during the most recent townhall, the GOP candidate uttered one of many outrageous statements regarding the country’s prison system that went unchallenged and largely unnoticed. “I do think we can do a lot of privatizations, and private prisons it seems to work a lot better,” said Trump when asked how he planned to reform the country’s prison system.Matthews didn’t ask Trump to elaborate or explain why he believes giving prisons a profit motive to lock people up is a good idea. But the fact of the matter is that the private prison boom in America has been so disastrous that even members of the Republican party have began speaking out against them. —Raw Story, April 3, 2016 

Corrections Corporation of America (CCA) and GEO Group avoided a combined $113 million in federal income taxes in 2015 alone, according to an analysis of federal financial filings by the racial and economic justice group Enlace. The prison business is booming despite efforts to reduce the nation's prison population, which has exploded in recent decades and forced the government to contract with private prison companies to meet demand. Last year, CCA reported $222 million in net profits, and GEO Group reported $139 million. CCA and GEO Group have enjoyed increased profits per prisoner housed in their facilities since 2012, when both companies began converting themselves into special real estate trusts that are exempt from the federal corporate income tax, at least in the eyes of the IRS. —Truthout, April 8, 2016.

Crime, more violent,
more sophisticated
innovates new ways
to injure the helpless,
defraud the innocent.
Protection is haphazard,
except for the privileged
and punishment is futile
without rehabilitation,
meaningful alternatives.
So the penal industry thrives
as other businesses go broke,
leaving citizens abandoned
on vulnerable streets.

Gary Beck has spent most of his adult life as a theater director. He has published chapbooks of poetry (Days of Destruction, Expectations, Dawn in Cities, Assault on Nature, Songs of a Clerk, Civilized Ways, Displays, Conditioned Response, and Resonance) and fiction (A Glimpse of Youth). Fault Lines, Perceptions, Tremors and Perturbations will be published by Winter Goose Publishing;  A Glimpse of Youth by Sweatshoppe Publications. His novels include Extreme Change (Cogwheel Press), Acts of Defiance (Artema Press), and Flawed Connections (Black Rose Writing). Call to Valor will be published by Gnome on Pigs Productions; Now I Accuse and Other Stories by Winter Goose Publishing. His original plays and translations of Moliere, Aristophanes and Sophocles have been produced Off Broadway. He currently lives in New York City.