THE FORTRESS, MY UNCLE

by Indran Amirthanayagam

President Biden announced an executive order on Tuesday to essentially block asylum at the southern border, a major shift in how the United States has historically handled claims for protection. The move, a suspension of longtime guarantees that give anyone who steps onto U.S. soil the right to seek a safe haven, is intended to deter illegal border crossings, an issue that has weighed on Mr. Biden’s political fortunes as he heads into the November presidential election… Immigration advocates have said the changes, taken together, amount to a virtual suspension of the asylum system for people crossing the border. The Biden administration “is eliminating key protections to prevent refugees from being returned to harm through imposition of this ‘shout test,’” said Robyn Barnard, a lawyer at Human Rights First. “It will be a recipe for disaster and certainly result in refugees being sent to danger or worse death.” —The New York Times, June 4, 2024

The fortress, the wall, thou shalt

not enter these rolling hills and 

grasslands where bison and 

Natives once roamed. You will 

not drink at the rancher’s 

trough or sleep in the sanctuary 

city’s single residency hotel. You 

will not get bussed to the liberal

East where a temporary home

waits until shelter services stop 

at sixty days and you find

yourself on the proverbial street

unless you have relatives willing 

to keep you off the public books. 

This is no grand illusion, no 

welcome, but you have left 

your local gangs to find 

a safer and more fitting union, 

turned into a red and blue 

wall. Incredible failure 

of the big heart to open, 

to say we will find a way 

to allow the Dream free again 

as in the old poems and movies 

that led our fathers and mothers 

to make the trek west and east, 

north and south. Goodbye 

to all that jazz America. Goodbye.

Indran Amirthanayagam is the translator of Origami: Selected Poems of Manuel Ulacia (Dialogos Books). Mad Hat Press has just published his love song to Haiti: Powèt Nan Pò A (Poet of the Port). Ten Thousand Steps Against the Tyrant (BroadstoneBooks) is a collection of Indran's 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 hosts the Poetry Channel on YouTube and publishes poetry books with Sara Cahill Marron at Beltway Editions.

A GRIM FAIRY TALE

by Lynn White

Dozens of asylum-seeking children have been kidnapped by gangs from a Brighton [UK] hotel run by the Home Office in a pattern apparently being repeated across the south coast, an Observer investigation can reveal. A whistleblower, who works for Home Office contractor Mitie, and child protection sources describe children being abducted off the street outside the hotel and bundled into cars. “Children are literally being picked up from outside the building, disappearing and not being found. They’re being taken from the street by traffickers,” said the source. —The Observer, January 21, 2023 PHOTO: Hove, where unaccompanied asylum-seeking children have been abducted, according to a contractor working for the Home Office. Credit: Andy Hall/The Observer

When I was a child 

my mother told me 

that Never Never Land

Is where the lost children go,

those who can’t find their way home.

My mother told me that

they stay children for ever

and can play all day long.

It sounds like a fairy tale

and perhaps 

that’s where these children have gone,

stepped into a fairy tale

or perhaps

they’ve been taken into one

by a monster

straight out of Grimm.

And now they wait.

And there’ll be others

waiting.

Waiting,

for someone to find them.

Perhaps they’ll put up a sign

hoping someone will see.

And they’ll sit by the sign

waiting for rescue,

waiting for the fairy tale ending

that can never come.

Lynn White lives in north Wales. Her work is influenced by issues of social justice and events, places and people she has known or imagined. She is especially interested in exploring the boundaries of dream, fantasy and reality and writes hoping to find an audience for her musings. She was shortlisted in the Theatre Cloud 'War Poetry for Today' competition and has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize, Best of the Net and a Rhysling Award. Her poetry has appeared in many publications including Apogee, Firewords, Peach Velvet, Light Journal, and So It Goes. 

AYITI 2022

by Roodly Laurore

translated from Haitian Kreyòl by Jerrrice J. Baptiste

The gunmen who invaded Christelle Pierre’s neighborhood in July gave her a stark choice: run or die. She was six months pregnant with her first child. The men were members of one of the ruthless criminal gangs that range unchecked across this city. They swiftly burned her neighborhood to the ground. I met her here late last month, a couple of days after she had given birth atop a square of cardboard in a public park. The cloth diapers, the downy receiving blankets and the infant mattress she had carefully saved up for had burned. Gone, too, was her husband. The gangsters who overran their community shot him in the head and left his body to burn. “I can’t stay on the streets with a baby,” she told me. “But I have nowhere to go. There is no shelter, no food, no medicine, no work. There is only chaos in this country.” Haiti is in free fall. —Lydia Polgreen, The New York Times, October 12, 2022. Photo: Children slept on the floor of a makeshift shelter after they were forced to leave their homes because of clashes between armed gangs. Credit:Odelyn Joseph/Associated Press via The New York Times.

Everywhere guns. 

Bandits pass as a legal force

Installed in each neighborhood.

Not looking up, not looking down.

They spread terror, shaking people.

Grandma‘s troubled, her son is a gang member.

Not long ago he scratched her head,

Plucked gray hair for her to fall asleep.

Now killing people.

What's wrong with my grandson?

 

Bullets like rain fell on tin roofs.

Adults, children frozen flat on the floor

Even pregnant women and newborns.

Police in riot gear stormed a rally on Friday, 

removing hundreds of protesters by truck.

Wings on our backs, 

Flee the land, avoid our death.

 

Like fools who have lost their way

Not looking up, not looking down

Misfortune hangs over our heads

Life is hell

No calling, no answering.

***

 

Toupatou zam fè kenken

Bandi pase kòm fòs legal 

Enstale nan chak katye 

Pagen anwo pagen anba 

Yap simaye laterè, fè moun pè.

 

Granmè gen pwoblèm, pitit li sòlda

Pa lontan li te konn grate tèt li 

Rache cheve gri pou fèl dòmi 

Kounyea ap touye moun 

Pitit mwen sak metew nan sa?

 

Bal tankou lapli degrennen sou do kay 

Granmoun, timoun rete plat atè 

San lizaj pou fanm ansent ak bebe kap fèt 

Polisye makonnen ak bandi konplike la vi 

Zèl nan do, kite peyi evite lanmò. 

 

Tankou moun fou ki pèdi rout 

Sa kap moute sa kap desann 

Malè pandye sou tout tèt 

La vi tounen lanfè 

Pagen rele, pagen reponn. 

Roodly Laurore was born and raised in Haiti. He is an engineer and poet. His poems are published in Kosmos Journal, Autism Parenting Magazine, Solstice Literary Magazine, Jerry Jazz Musician, and others.  Roodly lives in Haiti with his wife and two sons.

 

Jerrice J. Baptiste is an author of eight books and a poet in residence at the Prattsville Art Center & Residency in NY.  She is extensively published in journals and magazines such as Artemis Journal, The Yale Review, Mantis, Eco Theo Review, The Caribbean Writer, and many others. Jerrice has been nominated as Best of The Net by Blue Stem. She has been facilitating poetry workshops for eighteen years.

REBUILDING

by Indran Amirthanayagam

I did not want to write right after the crack, letting my mind fill slowly,

Caribbean and North American plates, moving side by side, whiplashing

each other for a moment, causing walls and roofs to tumble and Fortuné

to lose his bet, just one of several hundred dead already, thousands

with open wounds, tropical storm on the way. But there are some

cheerful consequences, the truce called by gangs so rescue trucks

and supplies can move south from Port Au Prince, heroism everywhere,

doctor performing surgeries on the tarmac, a man lending his propeller

plane to lift wounded to hospitals in the capital, hundreds digging

with pick axes, shovels, hands, to free family trapped under concrete,

sparing of human life at my friend's family compound, although

the famed swimming pool full of holy water has cracked and will

require repair, but faith remains in place, survivors have nowhere else

to turn but to internal (and external) resources. Aid ships are flying,

trucks rolling, but if only money I give can assuage pain, even if it buys

no pardon, if it means just that someone will get medicine, food, a blanket.

As for the political cyclone, early morning murder of the president,

and now systematic killing of investigators of the crime, these too must

be resolved. Murderers cannot be allowed to wipe away tracks, and

the memory of this latest natural beating can only be honored by building

with bricks, leaving space within foundation pillars, to allow for swaying

with the plates when they come together again the next time.

Indran Amirthanayagam writes in English, Spanish, French, Portuguese, and Haitian Creole. He has 19 poetry books, including The Migrant States (Hanging Loose Press, 2020) and Sur l'île nostalgique (L'Harmattan, 2020). Indran Amirthanayagam's Blue Window/ Ventana Azul, translated by Jennifer Rathbun,  is about to be published by Lavender Ink/Diálogos Books. In music, he recorded Rankont Dout. He edits The Beltway Poetry Quarterly, is a columnist for Haiti en Marche, won the Paterson Prize, and is a 2020 Foundation for the Contemporary Arts fellow.

AT THE TEXAS BORDER CROSSING

by Wendy Hoffman





Justice is a pebble under the rug you trip over,
a slipped stitch on embroidery,
mail that fails to be delivered.

I want to give my kids life
so the gangs won’t rape
or kill them,
so we can buy food, not steal.

Does that make me a criminal?
It makes me unwanted.
I didn’t think we’d make it to the border
but we did, thirsty, filthy.

I thought the children would faint,
I carried the youngest.
Asylum: that was for the old days.

The stiff legged officers pace like dictators.
Some enjoy, some hate, their job.
All my children severed from my spine,

its sound like a building demolished.
Our pleading cries carry no weight,
our filled lungs don’t matter.

Will I hug empty air for the rest of my life?
I don’t know where they took my children,
I may never feel or smell them again.
The space between us is deeper than a grave.

How can people in uniforms rip out my soul?
This theft will be engraved in my children’s minds forever.
First starvation, then murder of our bond.
They send me home alone.

What will they do with my children,
who cares about them?
Asylum: a dream from the past,
democracy doesn’t exist.

The gangs are restless,
they know I am here,
they prowl.

Wendy Hoffman is a retired social worker. Karnac Books, London, published her memoirs in 2014 and 2015, and a co-authored book of essays, in 2017. Her books are now with Aeon Publishers in England and Routlege in New York. Her first book of poetry was published in 2016. A new memoir is forthcoming. She has a MFA in creative writing and lives on the Olympic Peninsula with her dog.

SALVADORIAN SAW

by David Radavich

Image source: The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints

How best to
sacrifice a child?

Hand him over
to gang-leaders’ guns?
Pay for blood
in coinage?

Or give him to
government forces
in a simple box
I nailed myself?

Open her body
before the cathedral
with a scythe?

Or go to the U.S.
and shiver in a cage
without food
or shower or a bed?

Solomon, tell me
how to divide
this child

so her soul
can sing tomorrow.

David Radavich's latest book is America Abroad: An Epic of Discovery (2019), companion volume to his earlier America Bound: An Epic for Our Time (2007).  Other recent poetry collections are Middle-East Mezze (2011) and The Countries We Live In (2014).  He has served as president of the Thomas Wolfe Society, Charlotte Writers' Club, and North Carolina Poetry Society and currently administers the Gilbert-Chappell Distinguished Poet Series.