PAPILLON

by Lynn White

France plans to build a maximum-security prison wing for drug traffickers and Islamic militants near a former penal colony in French Guiana, sparking an outcry among residents and local officials. The wing would form part of a $450 million prison announced in 2017 that is expected to be completed by 2028 and hold 500 inmates. The prison would be built in Saint-Laurent-du-Maroni, a town bordering Suriname that once received prisoners shipped by Napoleon III in the 1800s, some of whom were sent to the notorious Devil's Island off the coast of French Guiana… It was once an infamous colony known for holding French political prisoners, including Captain Alfred Dreyfus (above left), who was wrongly convicted of being a spy and spent five years on Devil's Island, from 1894-1899. —Le Monde, May 20, 2025. Henri Charrière was convicted of murder in 1931 by the French courts and pardoned in 1970. He wrote the 1969 novel Papillon, a memoir of his incarceration in French Guiana.

The butterfly knows no death
in its metamorphosis.

It knows it will rise again
with the certainty
of Papillon now.

And as he rises to tell his story
history
repeats again.

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.

CIRCE'S BLESSING

by Ralph Culver

#Werepig Doodle by Ariane Hofmaniyar.

—for Marie Yovanovitch and Fiona Hill

Cruelty, greed, indifference to others—
these were men, abject one minute
in their pursuit of power, and
obsequious the next
in their fawning adoration
for those who achieved it, often at
their own expense, and worse if
their lives had been spared in the quest.
These were men; this is what men do.
And when she turned to them

and changed them, into swine, jackals,
any form that crept or flew
or crawled but could not speak
with a man’s corrupted tongue,
they had settled into the new shapes
she had given them and,
more often than not, they were thankful.
In fact, for the most part, they
did not want to go back to being men.
It was safe to say they had seen enough.

Here’s the deal: it’s not an intervention
if it’s what you’ve been begging for.
Like most women, whether the woman
knows it or not, whether or not
she wants to know, she understood them
better than they understood themselves.
She was doing them a favor. Such relief
to be the condor, the vulture, that covets
carrion and seeks it out, but calling
to his own, and sharing the spoils.

Ralph Culver's most recent collection of poems is So Be It (WolfGang Press, 2018). His work has appeared in many journals and anthologies. He is a past grantee in poetry of the Vermont Arts Council and multiple nominee for the Pushcart Prize. His book A Passible Man is forthcoming from MadHat Press in 2020.