DISQUIET OVER DISTANT MURDER

by Indran Amirthanayagam 

See also CFR reporting by Will Freeman

This disquiet, queasy floating gut, 

comes from wondering why 

an unmarked, unregistered 

plane lands in a military strip 

of an Ecuadorian airport, 

with an unknown number 

of crew members, takes off 

then drops drones 

on a fishing boat near 

the Galapagos, killing 

several fishermen, sinking 

the boat, then capturing 

survivors who are flown 

to El Salvador and treated 

there as shipwreck victims.

Whose ship is wrecked? 

Who turned good evil, 

night day, justice execution? 

Orwell? Or is this the new 

every day in these 

United States which 

dispatched the plane 

that sentenced 

the fishermen 

to float in the sea 

until rescued by the same 

crew that set off 

the drones that punched 

their ship into

the deep.

Indran Amirthanayagam writes a Substack. He has just published Isla itinerante ( Editorial Apogeo, Peru, 2025) and White Space Sonnets ( Sarasavi publishers, Sri Lanka, 2025). His other publications include El bosque de deleites fratricidas ( RIL Editores), Seer (Hanging Loose Press),The Runner's Almanac (Spuyten Duyvil), Powèt Nan Pò A: Poet of the Port (Mad Hat), and Ten Thousand Steps Against the Tyrant (Broadstone Books). He is the translator of Kenia Cano’s Animal For The Eyes (Dialogos Books) and Origami: Selected Poems of Manuel Ulacia (Dialogos Books). He edits The Beltway Poetry Quarterly, hosts the Poetry Channel on YouTube, and publishes poetry books with Sara Cahill Marron at Beltway Editions.

WE CAN DO VERY LITTLE, BUT I WILL DO THIS

by Annie Stenzel

 

 

 

Starting now, I propose to use GOOD, instead

of good when I talk about a Good thing,

and to say PRETTI rather than pretty, when I am struck

by how pleasing something looks to me.

 

I want this murdered woman, that executed

man, to live on in my speech with their names

alive and visible, notwithstanding their absence from

what should be a Good world, where so much is Pretti.

 

I could do nothing to save them from the horror

of their deaths. Nor can I do anything

for their loved ones, or the people whose lives they graced

every day. Grief won’t allow me to turn back

 

the hands of time, restore someone who was Good

and someone who was Pretti to this frightening world.

 

 

Annie Stenzel (she/her) is a lesbian poet who was born in Illinois, but did not stay put. Her second full-length collection, Don’t misplace the moon, was published in 2024 by Kelsay Books. Her poems have appeared or are forthcoming in print and online journals in Canada, the U.S., and the U.K., including Action, Spectacle; Gavialidae; Innisfree Poetry Journal; Pine Hills Review; Rust + Moth; Sheila-na-Gig; SoFloPoJo; SWWIM; St, Katherine’s Review; Thimble Lit Mag; and Whale Road Review. A poetry editor for the online journals Right Hand Pointing and West Trestle Review, she lives on unceded Ohlone land within walking distance of the San Francisco Bay.

DEAR GOVERNOR, PLEASE COMMUTE THIS SENTENCE

by Barbara H. Williams 

on behalf of Tremane Wood scheduled for execution November 13, 2025 

An Oklahoma inmate convicted of murdering a teenager who belonged to a nonviolent religious sect remains scheduled for execution, despite a parole board’s finding that he doesn't deserve to die. Tremane Wood (pictured), 46, is set to be executed by lethal injection on Thursday, Nov. 13, for the 2002 killing of 19-year-old Ronnie Wipf, who was stabbed in the heart during an ambush robbery at an Oklahoma City Ramada Inn. Wood's brother Zjaiton "Jake" Wood confessed to the crime, while Tremane Wood has always maintained his innocence. —USA Today, November 11, 2025

Let him live, Governor. Please give

him the benefit of doubt

who did not purpose to murder, who

is repentant and remorseful, who was

without proper counsel or defense, perhaps 

sin in itself––cold carelessness that’s

cast a dubious light on the verdict. Please honor

the parole board’s vote for clemency. Please

first search the heart, lay down that heavy

stone. That you, and we, in conscience walk more free.­­­­­

Barbara H. Williams is based in Princeton, New Jersey, where for many years she was a professional flutist and music teacher. She began writing poetry in 2013, with poems appearing in The Raven’s Perch, US 1 Worksheets, and The Paterson Review. She is a member of the DVP/US1 Poets Collective, and a Pushcart Prize nominee. Her first collection of poems Continuo was published in 2024 (Cool Women Press).

A REQUEST TO THE STATE

by David Chorlton

Aaron Gunches is not going to get his wish to be executed on Valentine’s Day. In an order Jan. 8, the Arizona Supreme Court rejected a Gunches pleading to forgo any more legal maneuvering and finally put him to death after he pleaded guilty to the 2002 murder and kidnapping charges of Ted Price, his girlfriend’s ex-husband. Instead, the justices said they want to hear arguments from all sides, including Attorney General Kris Mayes, who wants Gunches executed, but not on his schedule. —Arizona Capitol Times, January 8, 2025

The sun must wish events
were kinder when it climbs the sky
and looks down on
the latest shooting incidents, fires
gone wild
                  and a prisoner deciding
his time is due to die. The forecast here
is for deportations but
no rain. It’s playoff time, every touchdown
seems like another shot
and the elements are favorites to win
against all opposition. No sign
                                                         of clouds today
just wind in California
and Arizona waiting for an execution. 
Department of Corrections, chemicals
imported, nostalgia for
old West public hangings with the law
as violent as the criminals.
                                                 Legislation’s
language does not cover  peace
or love. A man condemned
can do no more than ask
that he become the state’s revenge
on Valentine’s Day.

David Chorlton is a longtime resident of Phoenix who finds comfort in keeping track of local birds and creatures on the fringe of the urban world. Having spent his early years in Europe, he still observes his surroundings with the pleasure of being in a foreign place.

INNOCENCE ISN’T ENOUGH

by Matthew King

Congresswoman Cori Bush delivered a speech on the House floor urging Missouri Governor Mike Parson to halt the execution of Marcellus Williams (above)… set to die by injection for the 1998 stabbing death of Felicia Gayle… “Taking the life of Marcellus Williams would be an unequivocal statement that when a white woman is killed, a Black man must die. And any Black man will do,” NAACP President Derrick Johnson wrote. —KMOV, September 20, 2024

The innocent have got off far too long.
We’ll make them pay for what they haven’t done.
The stakes are life and death, not right and wrong.
Are you surprised? We’ve said it all along,
this slogan on which we have always run:
the innocent have got off far too long.
A war is on! Which side do you belong
to? If it’s ours, then shun all whom we shun:
the stakes are life and death, not right and wrong.
Or do you see yourself among the throng
that’s gathered there to shout he’s not the one?
Mistakes? It’s life and death, not right and wrong.
The swans will have to sing another song.
They say we’ve gone too far? We’ve just begun.
The innocent have got off far too long.
Above all else the law must show it’s strong
and if you’re stunned we mean to more than stun
the innocent—they’ve got off far too long.
The stakes are life and death, not right and wrong.

Author's note: Marcellus Williams, at the time of writing, is scheduled to be executed by the state of Missouri on Tuesday, September 24, for a crime of which he is now clearly not guilty beyond a reasonable doubt, but of which his actual guilt or innocence may be beside the point under US law. St. Louis prosecutors have been trying to get his conviction overturned. But as a lawyer for the state of Arizona argued before the US Supreme Court in 2021, in a case which may be decisive for Marcellus Williams's, "innocence isn't enough.”

Matthew King used to teach philosophy at York University in Toronto; he now lives in what Al Purdy called "the country north of Belleville,” where he tries to grow things, counts birds, takes pictures of flowers with bugs on them, and walks a rope bridge between the neighbouring mountaintops of philosophy and poetry.

SALT AND IRON

by Julia Ross

Kenneth Eugene Smith appeared to convulse and shake vigorously for about four minutes after the nitrogen gas apparently began flowing through his full-face mask in Alabama's death chamber. It was another two to three minutes before he appeared to lose consciousness, all while gasping for air to the extent that the gurney shook several times. Smith was declared dead at 8:25 p.m. Thursday, and Alabama had become the first state to use nitrogen gas to execute a human… In 2022, Smith was strapped to the gurney to be executed by lethal injection, but prison officials could not gain access to his veins for the two IV lines before the death warrant expired and the execution process was halted. —Montgomery Advertiser, January 25, 2024. Italicized lines in the poem printed below are drawn from this article by Marty Roney. Above photo: The Rev. Jeff Hood, an Arkansas-based pastor and the spiritual adviser who was in the execution chamber with Mr. Smith, challenged the idea that the execution had gone as officials anticipated. Edward D. Fountain for The New York Times.

Credit...Credit...“It was appalling,” said Deborah Denno, an expert on execution methods at Fordham University Law School. “Pain for two to four minutes, particularly when you’re talking about somebody who’s suffocating to death — that’s a really long period of time and a torturous period of time.” 

The reverend made the sign

of the cross several times

as his condemned friend writhed,

ribs escaping chest in search of breath. 

The first time they were here

there was no mask, no plastic tubing.

They could lock eyes as the best

phlebotomists in the state tried 

and tried to kill him. Imagine that:

clemency in the form of blown veins.    

Divinity school did not prepare him 

for this. Lazarus who was raised

just to die again got to slip away 

both times in the warmth of arms    

while his buddy died tethered, 

wrists and ankles to the gurney,

nose and mouth to the wall

from which the nitrogen flowed

like salt and iron through a blood-

red sea. It was enough to bring you back

to certainty. The reverend removed 

his eyeglasses and wiped away tears,

knowing this time he would walk out—

sure, with God—but profoundly alone.

Julia Ross lives in Austin, TX. She writes about parenthood and about the sociopolitical hellscape known as Texas.

WAR, BY ALL MEANS

by Indran Amirthanayagam 

War. To end all wars. War. To squash, squeeze,

stamp out flea, bug, virus, hate-filled cur. War.

To avenge children, women, men, mowed

down by cars, in homes, gardens, streets.

War. Angels of doom, of death, thousands

of flares splashing the night sky, shot down,

blown up, debris falling aimlessly, thousand

injured, two thousand dead and counting. War.

Invasion. Unprovoked. Stoked. Warships

and aircraft carriers roaring towards the middle

of the Middle East, with sheikhs and princes,

and restless armies, drumming again, to defend,

to protect the right to exist? To live unbombed?

By a temple unbombed? School unbombed?

Agricultural cooperative, unbombed? War.

Peace. Yes bring the 'niks into the chat. Unify

the world before the horror and awe. Get

laws passed that will legalize the extra-

territorial execution. War. Times of War.

Times of throwing civic bones to dogs.

Dogs of war. Howling, yapping dogs

of war. Poor canines we steal for metaphors.

Metaphor. Cadence, Rhyme. Unreason:

War. Temporary Solution:War.

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.

AFTER THE FUNERAL

by Crystal Snoddon

“If police can execute an innocent man on video, none of us are safe.” 

—Buck Sexton, The Hill, December 11, 2017

Sweet Security, that phantasmal beauty, lies buried 6 feet under.

I saw the body-cam footage, how her sister,

Paranoia, shot her dead—

don’t watch

spiders scrawl warnings on flesh, listen:

Paranoia laughs, freed from cuffs

of assumed innocence.

Witness her lie on the motel bed, her bare,

thin lips exposed in a cavernous grin,

her adamantine teeth.

She bites hard, man.

Cops claim she’d hidden the rifle under the bed, but

no one dared lift the sham,

confirm the threat.

Paranoia, hungry cougar, prowls. Growls feed me.

Her cousin, Injustice, that crack whore,

trolls the subway,

steals candy from fatherless kid’s pockets,

feeds the family sugar power-drops,

lollipops on dirty sticks,

prefers home-baked shortbreads dipped

in ghetto chocolate, rich and dark.

They all sit on Daddy’s knee,

cuz Mama Liberty

drowned in the harbor, fascist bling chains round her neck,

her tablet cracked, her gown stained black

by pigeon shit.

Everyone runs blind.

Crystal Snoddon is a Canadian writer, whose forthcoming and previous poetry has been nominated for Best of the Net, and can be found in Figroot Press, Rat's Ass Review, Anti-Heroin Chick, among others.