THE THEOLOGY OF ICE

by Stuart Broughton

A protester carries a US flag through teargas launched to clear protesters outside the Broadview immigration processing centre in Chicago. —The Guardian, October 3, 2025

NBC Chicago's investigative team reports at least 3,000 jailed immigrants have vanished from federal records, according to human rights attorneys and organizations. 

All across America
people are 
disappearing.
One minute
they're here
and the next
they're gone. 
Disappeared,
dissolved,
dematerialised.
Deported.
Detained.

It's an American
Rapture. 
The Rapture,
but only in
America.

Those of us
brought up
on such theological
dogmas
know that this 
expulsion of the
saints will
usher in
a tribulation.
As if things
could get
worse.

The thing we got wrong
was that instead of the angels
doing the Lord’s work,
it’s the agents 
doing the Devil’s.

As my old pastor
used to say,
“Fuck”.

Stuart Broughton. Gen-something. Library-adjacent. Tangata Tiriti. Libra. From  Aotearoa | New Zealand. Trying to work it out.

THE PASSOVER STORY: A MIDRASH

by Joel Savishinsky

 

It seems that long ago, 
there was a strong streak 
of antisemitism in Egypt. 
Something about domestic servitude. 
Lots of salty sweat; 
construction jobs performed 
by undocumented people. 
A labor leader arose—the usual kind 
of suspect: Jewish, bearded, 
an immigrant, messianic inclinations 
—and he called a strike. There were 
threats of retribution. There 
were counter-threats, something 
about nasty stuff, plagues. 
 
Death threats, sacrificial animals, 
an angel making overhead 
surveillance flights—
possible early versions of 
Jewish space lasers—
lambs' blood smeared on doorways, 
a kind of warning, a kind of sign 
to leave us alone. Then there was 
an expulsion order. Many waters to cross...
that kind of thing. The people crossed over. 
It was not the Hudson. The promised land 
was not, contrary to rumors, New Jersey. 
 
Apparently, some of the descendants of 
the people who got across the water are 
now persecuting another people 
—also Semites, as it turns out—who live where 
the former slaves’ ancestors used to live. 
It is a sad cycle. 
 
Those who have a sense of history and 
its tragic ironies now raise their wine glasses 
and say, with tears in their eyes, Oy vey. 
We should know better. 
We could do a lot better than this.
 

Author's note: Midrash: an ancient commentary on part of the Hebrew scriptures, attached to the Biblical text. 
 

Joel Savishinsky is a retired professor of anthropology and gerontology, and the author of the collection Our Aching Bones, Our Breaking Hearts: Poems on Aging. A Pushcart and Best of the Net nominee, his work has appeared in The New York Times, Passager, and Willawaw. His book Breaking the Watch: The Meanings of Retirement in America, won the Gerontological Society of America’s annual book award. He has been leading family Passover Seders for many years. 

DON’T MOURN THE THORNS

by Corey Weinstein

Did you smile, even laugh aloud,

A smirk tumbling out of simmering glee?

Yes I was among the first 26,743,226

to feel joy when Notre Dame burned,

A spire collapsed shooting fireballs

through the attic, crashing the crosses,

Yellow flames licked the towers

and tickled my giggle bone,

 

From what abominations the fire sparked?

Of what burnt and musty stench like earth

where children are buried unmarked?

Rats running from their snuggle spots,

The ancient rot to their liking,

Dirty sins in the Savior’s name purified

Plastic icons oozed and bubbled black,

and is the toxic smoke pleasing to God?

 

The grand Dame’s construction marked

two hundred years of persecution

of expulsion, return and expulsion.

Built on the bones and bank notes 

of two centuries of violation,

feeding off the destruction

and exile of the Jews.

 

I won’t be contributing to the Church

where kings were crowned,

Where the crown of thorns stands in state.

Ask me again when plans include

a health center for family planning

and care for survivors of priestly abuse.

 

My joy only muted by the despair of the faithful

and knowing the stinking thing will rise as before.

Corey Weinstein’s poetry has been published in Vistas and Byways, The New Verse News, Our California 2024, The Ekphrastic Review, Forum (City College of San Francisco), California State Poetry Society, Visitant, Abandoned Mine, Speak Poetry of San Mateo County, California State Poetry Society and Jewish Currents, and he wrote and performed a singspiel called Erased: Babi Yar, the SS and Me.  He has been an advocate for prisoner rights and founded California Prison Focus, and he led the American Public Health Association’s Prison Committee for many years. In his free time, he hosts San Francisco OLLI’s Poetry Interest Group and plays the clarinet in his local jazz band, Tandem, his synagogue choir and woodwind ensembles.

UNOPTIMISTIC DAY

by Barbara Schweitzer 

Tennessee Republicans’ ruthless use of their state House supermajority to expel two young Black lawmakers for breaching decorum exposed a torrent of political forces that are transforming American politics at the grassroots. The GOP action, after the lawmakers had led a gun control protest from the House floor in response to last week’s Nashville school shooting, created a snapshot of how two halves of a diversifying and increasingly self-estranged nation are being pulled apart. AP Photo by George Walker IV: Justin Jones, Gloria Johnson and Justin Pearson raise their hands outside the state House chamber after Jones and Pearson were expelled from the legislature on Thursday, April 6, 2023, in Nashville. —CNN, April 7, 2023

I read the political news
and then I worry.
I go upstairs to the writing
room and stare.
I kill a moth that has
flown by our tacky traps
in the hopes that it is
the last one so I might
again pull the cashmeres
(gifts over years)
out of the cedar trunk
yes cedar trunk but no
it does not protect.
Every November I see
the damage little things
can do, like worries,
wormholes in everyday:
how will we survive
inside all this hatred
what is wrong with humans
how can we believe in evolution
when lame brains govern
and all are men at the root
and they are not created
equal...  I must believe but... 
It is just that we are not winged
and we turn to dust so quickly
it takes only a finger to squash
a moth and just five pounds
of pressure on that finger 
to kill us. Guns and men 
who rule will soon too
be dust, unfortunately 
most not before us.

Barbara Schweitzer is the author of 33 1/3: Soap Opera Sonnets (Little Pear Press, 2008) and is now returning to poetry after a decade of writing (more or less) for theatre (which is a very different experience).

LITTLE ROHINGYA

by Probal Basak

Myanmar's leader Aung San Suu Kyi is expected to defend her military against allegations of genocide at the International Court of Justice. The army is accused of targeting the country's Rohingya Muslim minority in 2017. A documentary being aired on Al Jazeera sheds new light on the abuses. Al Jazeera's Osama Bin Javaid reports. —Al Jazeera, November 24, 2019

I’m Alfred, Suu, caged
in your dark cabinet. Once
a gilded trophy, now stained
with blood, Suu, I am here,
seeking freedom from fear.

Omar appears in my dreams
as red tears from the beachfront
of Cox’s Bazar flow like a stream,
Suu, do you know little Omar?

Omar met me at the town square at midnight,
waking from nightmares after the family burial,
to share dreams of rowing across the bloody sea.
In the fog of gunpowder, I walked by his side over
bruised sisters, raped mothers, dead fathers,
brothers boot-stamped.

No, Omar didn’t ask me to desert you,
Suu. It’s me, haunted by bloodshed,
your glittering bearded Alfred.
It’s time you loosen my harness.

Oh! Suu, my silent mistress!
I too want to cross over to join
Omar at Cox’s Bazar.

Oh!  The power of powerless
chokes me here, Suu, I am here,
seeking freedom from fear.

Probal Basak is employed as on officer with the Department of Information & Cultural Affairs, Government of West Bengal, India. His parents, refugees from Bangladesh, settled in West Bengal during the 1971 India-Pakistan war. Probal grew up hearing stories of of the suffering of millions of migrated people.