ON CRUELTY: RILEY MOORE AT CECOT

by Jennifer Browne

What makes human hands unique? The human opposable thumb is longer, compared to finger length, than any other primate thumb. This long thumb and its ability to easily touch the other fingers allow humans to firmly grasp and manipulate objects of many different shapes. —American Museum of Natural History 

1. 

The hand can wield a weapon. The hand can soothe the lost, can smooth a tear-streaked cheek. The hand can navigate a loving body. The hand can pull an infant from a blood-smeared body. The hand can make a meal for a child, can feed a child. The hand can lead a person away from his home by the arm. The hand can pull a hood over a head. The hand can dig a grave in which to place a body. The hand can join in prayer. The hand can hold the grey-painted bar of a cell. The hand can close and lock the door of a grey-painted cell. There is so much to carry, to hold, to grasp. The hand can hold the reins and lead a clattering cart speeding into a ditch. The hand can hold a marker, can scrawl and sign a document. The hand can hold a tool. The hand can hold the tools that crack and crumble what felt sure. The hand can shape itself into a fist. The hand can shape itself into a fist and shake out its futility.

2. 

thumb (n.)—“shortest and thickest digit of the human hand, next the index finger and opposable to the others," Middle English thoume, from Old English þuma, from Proto-Germanic *thūman- (source also of Old Frisian thuma, Old Saxon, Old High German thumo, German Daumen, Dutch duim "thumb," Old Norse þumall "thumb of a glove"), etymologically "the stout or thick (finger)," from PIE *tum- "swell," from root *teue- "to swell" (source of tumor, tuber).

3. 

"Rep. Riley Moore posted photos of himself giving a thumbs up in front of imprisoned people at CECOT, an El Salvador prison notorious for human rights violations. The Trump administration has deported hundreds of immigrants without due process to CECOT, some by mistake. Moore also praised President Trump's handling of immigration in the post." —“Rep. Riley Moore Does Not Belong in Congress,” ACLU West Virginia

4. 

In its base state, the hand is empty.  

5. 

thumb (n.), ctd.—The figure of being under (someone's) thumb "controlled by that person's power or influence" is from late 14c.

6.

Look into the palm of any human hand, any primate hand, and see your own, see yourself. Interlace your fingers and feel the wealth of nerves that let you feel. Think of holding hands, holding faces, your beloved, the innocents within your care. Think of any of the harms you’ve wrought. The speed with which those harms happen, the carelessness.

7. 

We have stood at this door before, this terrifying new.

8.

"The photographs tell it all. In one, Private England, a cigarette dangling from her mouth, is giving a jaunty thumbs-up sign and pointing at the genitals of a young Iraqi, who is naked except for a sandbag over his head…In another, England stands arm in arm with Specialist Graner; both are grinning and giving the thumbs-up behind a cluster of perhaps seven naked Iraqis, knees bent, piled clumsily on top of each other in a pyramid." —Seymour M. Hersh, “Torture at Abu Ghraib,” The New Yorker, April 30, 2004

9.

Look into these photographs. Into whose ears do you want to speak some solace? Whose shoulders do you want to wrap with care? 

10. 

I cannot hold the want of wrath that rises from a place I have no name for in my body. 

11. 

thumb (n.), ctd.—Thumbs up (1887) and thumbs down (1906) were said to be from expressions of approval or the opposite in ancient amphitheaters, especially gladiator shows, where the gesture decided whether a defeated combatant was spared or slain. But the Roman gesture was merely one of hiding the thumb in the hand or extending it. Perhaps the modern gesture is from the usual coachmen's way of greeting while the hands are occupied with the reins.

12. 

There is something that I need to say, need to sing, need to scream into the ears of any who would listen, but the ones who would listen also want to scream. I have no words. There is something I need to say about power, about influence. There is something I need to say about how power swells. There is something I need to say about bloodsport, about the merciless. There is something I need to say about what can be manipulated even out of reach of a thumb, a finger, a hand. Look into these photographs. There are so many who are also raising thumbs, who are saying good, good, who are saying they are monsters. They are monsters. 

13. 

I have too many words. I have no words.

Author's note: My grandmother was born in 1906 in Elkins, WV, a city in West Virginia's 2nd congressional district, currently represented by Riley Moore. 

Jennifer Browne falls in love easily with other people’s dogs. She is the author of American Crow (Beltway Editions, 2024) and the poetry chapbooks Before: After (Pure Sleeze Press, 2025), In a Period of Absence, a Lake (Origami Poems Project, 2025), whisper song (tiny wren publishing, 2023) and The Salt of the Geologic World (Bottlecap Press, 2023).

PIETA

by Kay White Drew

for Women’s History Month

To the women in the Vietnam memorial:
One of you holds the dying soldier, one hand
to his chest. One hand, not two. You seem to know
he is beyond CPR, past the point where
anything can save him. The new volunteer
who crouches behind you, stricken,
in her fresh fatigues and boonie hat, must
know this too, green as she is. Your hand rests
on his shrapnel-filled chest not to rescue,
but to comfort, to say, “You’re not alone.”
Your sister-in-arms who’s become
the best friend you’ll ever have,
lays her hand along your arm
for mutual comfort and support
as she calls for help out of habit
in her resonant voice. To a compatriot:
“Need a doctor over here!” To the universe:
“Enough! For the love of God, enough!”

In a time when petty tyrants rewrite
history to suit their bigotry, your granite
tableau stands solid in resistance.

Kay White Drew is a retired physician whose poems appear in various anthologies and internet outlets including The New Verse News. She’s also published short stories and several essays, one of which was nominated for a Pushcart Prize, and a memoir, Stress Test. She lives in Rockville, MD with her husband. Spending time in nature helps her stay sane in these difficult days.

GURFA

by Joan Mazza

From one remaining gallon of water,

precious drops pooled in the palm.

The fighting continues after two long weeks,

the air filled with dust and the stench

of rotting bodies.

Water and electricity have been turned off,

no food and no way to cook any food remaining

in half a house that has been shelled. Next door,

a home on fire, two dogs howling, left behind.

How to escape?

Three children, but only two hands to hold

onto them. Who will carry what they’ll need

wherever they might land? Which way is safe

passage, a welcome waiting from strangers?

How to escape?

Tanks line up for miles, out of gas, ammunition

spent. Phone dead. Each vehicle with a driver,

no more than a trapped boy, his stomach growling,

howling. No water. He cries for his mother, his bed.

How to escape?

Who asked for this war? One man with a few drops

of power he wants to hold. No matter who

suffers, dies. Didn’t other leaders kill millions?

Stalin. Hitler. Pol Pot. He can, too. Confident.

No need to escape.

Joan Mazza has worked as a microbiologist and psychotherapist, and taught workshops  on understanding dreams and nightmares. She is the author of six books, including Dreaming Your Real Self, and her poetry has appeared in Rattle, Valparaiso Poetry Review, Prairie Schooner, Poet Lore, and The Nation. She lives in rural central Virginia.

THE CROSSING

by John Valentine

The Supreme Court on Tuesday refused to block a ruling from a federal judge in Texas requiring the Biden administration to reinstate a Trump-era immigration program that forces asylum seekers arriving at the southwestern border to await approval in Mexico…. The court’s three more liberal members—Justices Stephen G. Breyer, Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan—said they would have granted a stay of the trial judge’s ruling…. The challenged program, known commonly as Remain in Mexico and formally as the Migrant Protection Protocols, applies to people who left a third country and traveled through Mexico to reach the U.S. border. After the policy was put in place at the beginning of 2019, tens of thousands of people waited for immigration hearings in unsanitary tent encampments exposed to the elements. There have been widespread reports of sexual assault, kidnapping and torture. —The New York Times, August 24, 2021. Photo: Olga Galicia and her family at a makeshift camp for migrants in Tijuana, Mexico, near the border with the United States. Credit: Emilio Espejel/Associated Press via The New York Times.

The trail snakes north, coils

like a rattler.

Mindlessly moving in the glare  

of the sun, they go.

Diaspora bound. Weary,

everything left behind.

Hopeless. 

And here comes the hand

that says no. 

The one that refuses

The hand like a wall.

Thunder, rain up ahead. 

Lightning.    

The trembling. The reckoning.

All that they feared. 

The night. Its stillness.

The hand.  

And now

here comes the storm.

John Valentine lives in Savannah, GA, where he teaches aesthetics at a local art college.

WHAT WE LEARNED IN 2020

by Katherine West

The globe of Earth has shrunk, a small balloon

losing air sinking against the blue blue sky

to land exactly in my hand, all mine 

to know the pain of every land, all you 

and you and you, all me in mirrors new 

as stars on windy nights of sharpened light 

that cuts my chest that makes me bleed your time

cut short then so is mine the years so few 

now less the globe a shriveled wrinkled skin

I cup as gently as a fallen bird 

my own true love I carry home to bed 

I tuck you up, I slide beside so thin

we fit, an old and folded map, a world 

of continents that kiss, of coasts that wed.

 

Katherine West lives in Southwest New Mexico, near Silver City.  She has written three collections of poetry: The Bone Train, Scimitar Dreams, and Riddle, as well as one novel, Lion Tamer.  Her poetry has appeared in journals such as Writing in a Woman's Voice, Lalitamba, Bombay Gin, The New Verse News, Tanka Journal, Splash!, Eucalypt, and Southwest Word Fiesta.  The New Verse News nominated her poem "And Then the Sky" for a Pushcart Prize in 2019.  In addition she has had poetry appear as part of art exhibitions at the Light Art Space gallery in Silver City, New Mexico and at the Windsor Museum in Windsor, Colorado.  Using the name Kit West, Katherine's new novel When Night Comes: A Christmas Carol Revisited has just been released, and a selection of poetry entitled Raising the Sparks will come out in 2021, both published by Breaking Rules Publishing.  She is presently at work on the sequel to When Night Comes. It is called Slave: The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn Revisited. She is also an artist.

ALL YOU NEED IS LOVE

by Tricia Knoll





We have feasted
so long
on anger

slathered on our bread
heating up our coffee
fried up in lard.

We knew
that angst and anxiety
pickle up that anger.

Fear makes food
taste like sawdust
and worms

until the wellspring
fills, runs clear,
and someone takes

the child’s hand
to offer a clear
and cool sip

and the old song
something can be saved
the game can still be played

sprinkles like rain on what burns
slides like teardrops
pours like love.

Tricia Knoll was for many months in the Bernie Sanders wing of Democratic voters, a loyal Vermonter. She has a voice disability and was deeply moved to hear Brayden Harrington's speech in support of Joe and the selflessness of a man who stops to help a kid with stuttering. She is preparing letters every day for Vote Forward to urge liberal leaning voters to vote.

HER BROTHER

by Penelope Scambly Schott

Abdi Ali Ibrahim speaks during a Reuters interview after burying the hand of his sister Asha Ali Ibrahim believed to have been killed during an explosion that killed hundreds last Saturday in KM4 street in the Hodan district in Mogadishu, Somalia. -- REUTERS/Feisal Omar, October 17, 2017.

He came downtown to hunt for his sister.
He couldn’t reach her on her cell phone.
He can’t find her in any of the hospitals.
Someone has collected loose body parts
and put them into black plastic bags. He
searches in the bags until he recognizes
his sister’s wedding band. Now this man
stands ankle deep in the charred rubble.
He holds all he has–his sister’s left hand.


Penelope Scambly Schott was awarded four New Jersey arts fellowships before moving to Oregon, where her verse biography A is for Anne: Mistress Hutchinson Disturbs the Commonwealth received an Oregon Book Award for Poetry. In 2013 she had two books published: Lovesong for Dufur and Lillie Was a Goddess, Lillie Was a Whore. Penelope’s most recent book (2014) How I Became an Historian is a lyric examination of the connections between past and future, both in her family and in the larger world.

HILLARY'S HAND

by Davi Walders

As I watch Hillary make her way through the hotel ballroom,
I think of my mother, gone now twenty years. How thrilled

she would have been to be here. Beneath crystal chandeliers,
between tables filled with uneaten finger sandwiches and scones,

I feel my mother’s hand pressing into mine, pushing me to lean
over the stanchions as I wait. Even though guards glare, I reach

out to touch Hillary, to shake her hand as she passes by on
the plush carpet. Smiling in her brilliant red suit, she talks

to each of us as she approaches her daughter already at the podium,
I hear my mother’s voice whisper, ‘Keep going, Hillary,’ (or maybe

it was mine) or one of the other thousand voices as she moves
along the aisle surrounded by ten huge secret service men

with earpieces. Obama won last time; now this time must be
her time. ‘Revved up and rarin’ to go,’ Barbara Mikulski shouts

from a platform box that lifts her tiny figure toward the microphone
as the room goes wild. We have waited lifetimes to see a woman

do this. Seventy years of marching to get the vote, more than another
ninety working towards this moment. It’s Hillary’s turn; it has to be

Hillary’s turn. Not for me alone, but for the joy my mother would
have had holding my hand shaking Hillary’s hand.


Davi Walders is the author of three poetry books.

SWAGGER

by Herb Kauderer

not understanding
that presentation
is all about posture

the presidential hopeful
offends the interstellar alien
with a proffered hand

his campaign ends painfully,
his promise of war fulfilled


Herb Kauderer is an associate professor of English at Hilbert College, and the author of over a thousand published poems, including ten books.

YOUR HANDS WILL BE PREGNANT IN THE AFTERLIFE

by Luisa A. Igloria

After claiming that a man would meet his masturbating hand “pregnant in the afterlife” and “asking for its rights,” a Muslim televangelist has set Turkish social media aflame. Self-styled televangelist Mücahid Cihad Han . . . claimed that Islam strictly prohibits masturbation as a “haram” (forbidden) act. “Moreover, one hadith states that those who have sexual intercourse with their hands will find their hands pregnant in the afterlife, complaining against them to God over its rights,” he said, referring to what he claimed to be a saying of Prophet Muhammad. . . . “Istimna,” the Arabic term for masturbation that Han also referred to, is a controversial issue in Islam, as there have been varying opinions on its permissibility throughout history. The Quran has no clear reference to masturbation and the authenticity of many hadiths is questionable. —Hurriyet Daily News (Turkey), May 25, 2015. Image source: MemeCenter

Your hands will be pregnant in the afterlife,
warns the televangelist to men who masturbate,
which makes me put my coffee cup down in alarm and stare hard

at my own hands. What about women? What happens to women's hands?
I mean, not necessarily from masturbating, but from all the things
our hands ​so frequently and ​lovingly do? I know a carver who couldn't stop

touching​ ​any surface of wood he happened across: flotsam on the beach,
the rails​ ​along a ship's boarding ramp on which his fingers could have lingered
for hours if not for the porter's brusque Come on, hurry it up will ya?​ 

I know a weaver who'll smooth and finger each tensile fiber on ​her loom,​ ​
each shuttle's pass setting off ​hundreds of indistinct vibrations that give
​the resulting garment its patterns of flushed color and shade.

If indeed hands could get pregnant in this or in ​the afterlife,
would that provide relief for women who have up to now borne
the brunt of each sexual​ ​aftermath, ​9 months housing a growing body

until it's really time​ ​to ​count out the rent? Think of ​the ​revisions
we'd have to make​ ​in the histories of our science and art, ​including
fashion---​ ​buttoned elbow-length gloves back in style, the idiom peek-

a-boo once more in circulation; artists commissioned to paint
fig leaves like giant Band-Aids over the hands of both Adam and Eve​,
in a garden cordoned off with signs saying Absolutely do not touch.


Luisa A. Igloria’s most recent publication credits include Ode to the Heart Smaller than a Pencil Eraser (Utah State University Press, 2014) and Night Willow (Phoenicia Publishing, 2014).

A GRAFT IN CHANGSHA

by Daniel Bosch

Chinese doctors have saved a man's severed hand by grafting it to his ankle, it is reported. --BBC News, December 16, 2013

Among the amazing inventions
Of the Chinese: pulp paper,
A musical four-line stanza,
A tiny hand carved at the end

Of a bamboo shaft—each
In its way an acknowledgement
Of how often and how painfully
One’s reach exceeds one’s grasp.

Who has not scratched furiously
At a blank sheet, leaving faint scars
When one desired only words
Through which lifeblood flows?

Who has not punched and kicked
At the bounds of thought, only
To find oneself beyond them,
Seeking not a way out, but a way in?

Who has not felt some small thing
Make its glorious revolution
At the top of one’s sock or
Under the cuff of one’s pants?

No hand without extremity.
No mind that will not fold
Like paper. No stanza that will not cut
The breath to shape what one sees.

Every measure taken is temporary.
At the end of any given line
One believes each mute twist of the stick:
This tourniquet’s tight enough.   


Daniel Bosch is Senior Editor @ www.berfrois.com .

FINDING RICHARD

by Dave Goldenberg

Richard III, Infamous English King, Found Under Parking Lot --US News headline, February 4, 2013.
Image source: University of Leicester

"March on, join bravely, let us to't pell-mell

If not to heaven, then hand in hand to hell."
--Shakespeare's Richard III



To none would this cold grave as heav'n appear,

And so it seems, clod-cloister'd in cold clay,

That I did damn'd in hell these centuries lay

'Neath Vauxhalls and Renaults in second gear



Yet 'tis in heav'n I have come to stay.

The Bard hath penned perhaps no greater role--

And lions have inhabited my soul,

Such as Pacino and Olivier.


Dave Goldenberg is a New York ad guy who moved his office about 30 miles uptown. Although he's won awards as a writer and creative director, he's equally at home in his left brain. Over 20 years he's served every kind of client, from AOL and American Express and Schick to MTV and America Online. But that's just his day job. He's also a folksinger on the local circuit, a passionate skier and an unapologetic Yankees fan.

PEACE BROKERS

by Angie Trudell Vasquez

Peace Brokers dance
even when there’s no chance
of winning, they move to
their own beat path
plan for the best and worst
and recant all previous positions
if necessary – they are not
too proud to say they were wrong
or misguided; and listen to the hand
extended in warmth, gripping
close with their own heart
all that they hold dear; and
perchance a day of reckoning comes near
and the dead rise from their graves
find their tongue and debate
with heat about the success
of so many years spent lying beneath the grass;
the peace brokers listen, take tea,
nod when they agree,
hold up a pen
when they do not
indicating they’d like time
at the podium of truth
when the others are done speaking;
peace brokers take notes, ask questions,
and resolve not to leave the table
until all has been said, heard and agreed
until an action plan is set for the next meet
and they do not give up ever or admit defeat
because what is to gain is so sweet.


Angie Trudell Vasquez is a poet and writer currently living in Milwaukee, WI. She's been published by Verse Wisconsin, Burdock, Raven Chronicles, Real Change and was the featured poet for the Latina Monologues from 2009 to 2011. In 2003 she was a featured poet at Bumbershoot, Seattle's Music and Art Festival. Her first book The Force Your Face Carries has been published under her own label, Art Night Books.