TRAVEL ADVISORY

by Shalmi Barman

"A visa is not a right. It's a privilege," [US Secretary of State Marco] Rubio said on Tuesday. Trump administration officials have said student visa and green card holders are subject to deportation over their support for Palestinians and criticism of Israel's conduct in the war on Gaza, calling their actions a threat to U.S. foreign policy and accusing them of being pro-Hamas. —Reuters, May 21, 2025

The State Department has told U.S. consulates and embassies to immediately begin reviewing the social media accounts of Harvard’s student visa applicants for antisemitism in what it called a pilot program that could be rolled out for colleges nationwide. —Politico, May 30, 2025

Counselors who work with foreign students eager to attend college in the U.S. are advising them to purge their social media accounts of posts that could attract the attention of U.S. State Department officials. —CBS News, May 39, 2025

To demonstrate that I don’t pose a threat,
I strip the stickers from my laptop case,
purge the Kindle reader, ctrl-shift-del
my browsing history as if the past
two, ten, eighty years had never been.
 
We’re experts here at inoffensiveness,
smalltalk savants, the brightest and the best
arriving on these shores to earn our keep,
inflate the GDP and pay our dues—
the price of entry to the winners’ club—
in labor, taxes, learned neutrality.
 
A privilege, not a right. In Khan Younis
the going rate for a sack of gritty rice
exceeds my weekly wage. Faucets frothing
overrun my glass. A legless child
plucks maggots from his wounds. I sink a knife
deep in the turkey, utter ritual thanks
for innocence far from the blasted plains
of Gaza, Yemen, Iraq, Lebanon…
 
Purpose of visit? To become just like you,
I want to tell the agent matching my name
against a neutered profile. To shop at Target
on the Fourth of July, pledging allegiance
like a marriage vow. For this I stand in line,
bereft of fluids, jacket, shoes, and shame,
not-thinking of checkpoints a world away,
asking smilingly how much? how high?


Shalmi Barman is a South Asian national, a holder of a student visa, and a newly minted PhD. She spent several years at the University of Virginia writing a dissertation on class and labor in Victorian fiction, and doing other things that would likely be deportable offenses today. Her poetry has previously appeared in The New Verse News and also recently in Boudin, Blue Unicorn, EcoTheo Review, Gyroscope Review, and elsewhere.

CONVICTION IN XXXIV MOVEMENTS

by Erin Murphy

Altoona, Pennsylvania—May 30, 2024

 

I.

We are sitting in a tavern by the railroad tracks when the verdict is announced.

 

II.

A wave of gasps ushers in a hush as patrons scurry to check their cellphones.

 

III.

Like when a hawk swoops through a copse of trees and all breeds of birds chirp warnings, then fall silent.

 

IV.

Overheard: I’ll bet all the jurors were Democrats.

 

V.

In our town, 2020 election signs are still staked in lawns like tombstones.

 

VI.

When we moved here, people asked Whose house did you buy? Surely they knew the previous owners, went to church with their parents, played football with their brother or cousin.

 

VII.

Overheard: Hot damn! He’ll raise even more money now!

 

VIII.

Here, even the rain moves slowly. Some days it’s pouring in our front yard and dry in the back.

 

IX.

A few evenings ago, two women with clipboards came door-to-door encouraging registered Republicans to vote. Wrong house, I said and urged them to Take the rest of the night off—better yet, the rest of the year.

 

X.

Overheard: He can just pardon himself.

 

XI.

Overheard: I don’t think he can pardon himself for a state crime.

 

XII.

Overheard: When he’s re-elected, he’ll change the law so he can pardon anyone he wants.

 

XIII.

Spitting distance from this bar in 1855, the first spark of the Civil War when two men leapt from a moving train: runaway slave Jacob Green and slavecatcher James Parsons.

 

XIV.

Overheard: He’ll send ’em all back to where they came from.

 

XV.

Overheard: Do not pass go, do not collect $200!

 

XVI.

Overheard: More like $200 million—that’s how much they’re stealing from us.

 

XVII.

Overheard: laughter.

 

XVIII.

Townsfolk confronted Parsons, demanding he prove Green wasn’t a free black, and in the scuffle, Green was able to flee. Parsons was charged with kidnapping, infuriating the South.

 

XIX.

Mason Dixon Line.

 

XX.

Blood line.

 

XXI.

Toe the line.

 

XXII.

Cross the line.

 

XXIII.

Line one’s pockets.

 

XXIV.

Bottom line.

 

XXV.

Flatline.

 

XXVI.

New York Herald headline, Jan. 31, 1856: “Threatened Civil War Between Virginia and Pennsylvania.”

 

XXVII.

From the Herald article: The common courtesies of life, good-neighborhood…should have been sufficient to induce the State of Pennsylvania to aid the people of Virginia to enforce the rights of her citizens to such property.

 

XXVIII.

Earlier this spring, a local middle school cut “Lift Every Voice and Sing” from its choral program after parents complained that the song was “divisive.”

 

XXIX.

Let our rejoicing rise/

 

XXX.

High as the list’ning skies

 

XXXI.

Sing a song full of the faith that the dark past has taught us/

 

XXXII.

Sing a song full of the hope that the present has brought us

 

XXXIII.

Overheard: That judge better have a good bodyguard.

 

XXXIV.

And yet. Last month we landed in L.A. during the solar eclipse. Under the baggage claim atrium, I pulled out the sleeve of eclipse glasses I’d packed just in case. I looked up. There it was: what Wordsworth called something night and day between. Is there a word for the urge I felt to share it with all my fellow travelers? As weary passengers came down the escalator, I offered them glasses, summoning the word sun in every language I knew: sol, soleil, sonne. Some hung back skeptically as others eagerly pressed the dark lenses to their eyes. Flight attendants and pilots from Russia, Korea, Poland, Japan, Tahiti. A man with a handmade ukulele. A maintenance worker with a walkie-talkie. Parents, children, young adults who ran to retrieve their grandparents in wheelchairs. Tio, you have to see this! one teen told her uncle. A boy said Mommy, Mommy—the moon is like Pac-Man taking a bite out of the sun! Even a few skeptical passengers shyly came around. So many ohhhhs. So many smiles. So many faces tilted toward the same sky.

Erin Murphy’s latest book of poetry, Fluent in Blue, was published by Grayson Books in April 2024. She is professor of English at Penn State Altoona and serves as Poetry Editor of The Summerset Review. 

POSTCARDS FROM MY PLACE IN LINE

by Sandra Fees

Tweeted by Apoorva Mandavilli <@apoorva_nyc> based on the “Find Your Place in the Vaccine Line” app at The New York Times.

Phase 1A

I’m a rationed portion of myself. Loungewear

and sweatpants, no bra. Yesterday I spent four

hours trawling the provider map to get in line

online. No appointments. Is this what a ration

line feels like? Except now we wait on laptops.

It’s not my turn. But it is my boyfriend’s and

my friend’s and my sister’s and there's no place

in line. Just today someone tried to steal a turn.

 

Phase 1B

That’s me, 1B. There isn’t a line—yet.

Clergy to queue up with first responders,

educators, and grocery store workers

who stock shelves and fill my trunk

with groceries. Today, the young man who

emptied the sleet-spritzed cart warned

drive carefully out there. I hope he gets

the vaccine soon. Isn’t it scarier in there?

 

Phase 1C

The CDC matrix is a scramble of phrases

like prevention of morbidity & mortality

and preservation of societal functioning.

They position them on the scales called

equity. Everyone wants to weigh in.

 

Phase 2

Dr. Fauci says by summer. I miss

the ocean. Last year I had to pay

a cancelation fee. Is it okay to wear

my royal blue bikini from last year?

 

Phase 3

This week Moderna launched a booster trial,

like a rocket. I hope the space program boosts

its rockets too, speeds us where we need to go.

 

Sandra Fees is the author of The Temporary Vase of Hands (Finishing Line Press, 2017) and served a term as Berks County, Pennsylvania, Poet Laureate (2016-2018). Her work has appeared in Sky Island Journal, Poets Reading the News, Chiron Review, and others.

THE DOOR

by Katherine West

"But it falls on all of us, regardless of our race or station—including the majority of men and women in law enforcement who take pride in doing their tough job the right way, every day—to work together to create a ‘new normal’ in which the legacy of bigotry and unequal treatment no longer infects our institutions or our hearts.”  —Barack Obama, May 29, 2020

There is a door—
someone has left it open
just a little bit
so a band of light
runs along the floor
to where we stand in the dark
touches the feet
of the first in line

I can tell this makes them happy
even though their backs are to me
something about the relaxed
line of their shoulders
the ease of the way they turn their heads
this way
then that
confident
it won't be long now

The band of light
doesn't touch my feet—
I'm about halfway down the line
even if I stood on tiptoe
or craned my neck to one side
I couldn't get a good view
through the door

So I look at the line—
it starts out white with reflected light
then gets darker and darker
the further away it reaches
down the dim hall where we wait—
the first in line are clear cut
their collars
their buttons
outlined in light
but the ones behind me blur
into a single
black
unmoving
cloud

I wait for someone to step out of this cloud
to show me details
beautiful details
of finger and face
soft lips
the curve of forehead
I wait for the music
of speech
laughter
for an empty space
inside me
to fill

Then I feel it
a weight
in the space that is not empty
a weight that shifts
like a child
impatient to be born—
then it kicks
something bursts
and I see
hundreds of eyes meeting mine—
candles, stars, constellations...
we all move at the same time and the line
is broken


Katherine West lives in Southwest New Mexico, near the Gila Wilderness, where she writes poetry about the soul-importance of wilderness, performs it with her musician husband, Yaakov, and teaches seasonal poetry workshops that revolve around "wilderness writing."  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 Lalitamba, Bombay Gin, and TheNewVerse.News  which recently nominated her poem "And Then the Sky" for a Pushcart Prize.

THE ERROR

by David Mason

Aeon-Uranus, Gaea, Carpi, Horae and Prometheus, Greco-Roman mosaic, Damascus Museum via Theoi Greek Mythology

So much descends from the sky
and rises to it, Ouranos to the Greeks
in a mistaken myth. So much descends
and rises, rain and prayers, errors
and Eros with his wings and arrows.
Man-god, mistake, the sky
is woman, womb of all weathers,
and what descends from that first mistake
is the line of all-white men in ties
of righteousness, stupidity and lack
of any understanding of the world.
They fall in line, sit in judgment.
They reject. They cut and dig
for dollars made of dead things
pressed for a billion years.
They who believe the myth
of Ouranos can’t see the clouds
as bellies giving birth to rain,
can’t feel the tears
of anyone but themselves.


David Mason is an American poet living in Tasmania.

CROSSING THE LINE

by Jill Crainshaw

Source: Inter-Korean Summit Press Corps/Pool via Bloomberg.

How do you cross a line
Drawn in nuclearized sand?

Lift one foot and then the other
From the bony grip of history

Even if movements are awkward and
Bodies petrified from standing still

Too long estranged from heart-beats
That keep muscles supple;

Ancient enemies hand in hand
With clumsy unfamiliarity

Step north and then south
Step south and then north

Limbering up and stretching out—
Dance.


Jill Crainshaw is a professor at Wake Forest University School of Divinity in Winston-Salem, NC.

INK

by Alejandro Escudé

Cyprien @MonsieurDream

I draw 

a cartoon of a god.

The god encircled 

by wolves.

The wolves 

with the faces of politicians.

I am a politician

sitting at my desk.

I hold my gonads 

tight under it,

here comes the myrrh, 

here comes

the frankincense. 

Where to draw the line?

I keep it simple 

and I fry. I make 

it complicated 

and I am incarcerated. 

Where to draw the line?

I said what I said. 

I’d say it atop 

the Eiffel Tower, too. 

I’d scream it  

from within 

the Bridge of Sighs.

Orphan. 

Poor. 

Alone. 

God-crazy. 

Where to draw, 

what to draw,

how to draw it 

fairly, plainly, lovingly.

The blood in my body 

was not ink.

Alejandro Escudé published his first full-length collection of poems, My Earthbound Eye, in September 2013. He holds a master’s degree in creative writing from UC Davis and teaches high school English. Originally from Argentina, Alejandro lives in Los Angeles with his wife and two children.