STOP THE KILLERS!

by Raymond Nat Turner

The Trump administration has struck at least 32 vessels killing about 115 people in the Caribbean Sea and Eastern Pacific Ocean since September —PBS, January 4, 2026

Burlap bags stuffed with tuna and blue marlin.

Catch of a lifetime! Juan’s already counting the

cash in his head. Visualizing pawn shop guitar

for Gabriel, his 10-year-old son, graduating to guitar

from ukulele. Gabriel’s greeted morning rooster-

like—since age 3—with “Let’s practice, Papa!”

Before pushing off to sea Juan bought the computer 

Rosario wished for from a journalism student he met

at the fish market training fishmongers to compute. He

also bought the bicycle Maria longed for and stashed it

at a neighbor’s house. Juan was out to make his young

family’s Christmas the best ever.

BOOM!

Bloody mess below his waist. Juan’s a strong swimmer. But

he can’t feel his legs. He quickly grabs on to fiery flotsam.

Is that Javier hanging on for dear life across from him?

He hears his children’s joyful shrieks. Sees them jumping

Up and down with joy. He kisses Lourdes long and tenderly…

BOOM!

A pomade man has amplified orders of

his demented Don into “Kill them all!”

Laughing, they dub it  a “double-tap 

strike—”

like some cool dance step

signaling mad moves to come… 

Author’s notes:

This poem is a puzzle I put together based on backwards, savage, lethal headlines and loving holiday memories I hold. The puzzle pieces are as follows:

1. The two men who were infamously ordered summarily executed by a pomade man sucking up to his Don.

2. When I was around 10 my dad took me deep sea fishing in Ensenada. And, as beginner’s luck would have it, I caught both a 21lb Yellowtail and a 21lb Bonita.

3. When I was eighteen or nineteen, my dad who'd played trombone in high school, purchased a pawn shop trombone for me.

4. Our JazzPoetry Ensemble UpSurge! purchased a $300 kids' drumkit for a bandmate’s 3-year-old. And from then on the child woke up every morning saying, "Papa, let's practice!" His dad obliged him. Now that 3-year-old is the 23-year-old drummer for John Coltrane's son, Ravi!

5. One Christmas Eve my Mom and Dad hid a brand new bicycle from me at the next door neighbor's house.

6. Lourdes was a beautiful curly-haired Mexican Jack In The Box worker I had a huge crush on.

Raymond Nat Turner is a NYC poet; Black Agenda Report's Poet-in-Residence; and founder/co-leader of the jazz-poetry ensemble UpSurge!NYC.

A DEADLY BEAUTY

by Geoffrey Philp

 

    

When the MV Express Pearl, carrying twenty-five

tons of nitric acid and seventy-eight tons of plastic

pellets, lurched into the port of Colombo, sailors

 

released carbon dioxide into the hold to put out a fire

that had been smoldering for two weeks. But it was too late.

The ship keeled from an explosion of the acid and hurled

 

the plastic pellets into the air, which descended on the yellow

sands of Sri Lanka in a flutter of plastic snow that glittered

at sunrise, like the stone Devair Alves Ferreira bought

 

from two junkyard scavengers. Intrigued by the blue

light, Devair shaved granules from the stone and shared

the poison of cesium 137 with his family and friends

 

in Goiânia until his wife’s hair fell out in clumps

on the bathroom floor. And while the Brazilian police

arrested the men responsible for the theft of a radioactive

 

canister from an abandoned cancer lab, competing

adjusters shift blame to India and Qatar, which denied

entry to their harbors because they “didn’t want

 

the problem in their backyard.” But tell that to the soldier

scraping debris from the backs of crabs, and who fears

the pellets will raise the temperature of the sand in nesting

 

grounds of turtles, and a generation of single-sex hatchlings

will crawl into the sea. Or tell that to fishermen who can no longer

feed their families as the ship sinks and the ocean burns.

Geoffrey Philp is the author of five books of poetry, two novels, two collections of short stories, and three children's books. 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. He is currently working on a graphic novel for children, My Name is Marcus. Twitter: @GeoffreyPhilp / Instagram: @geoffreyphilp