A MURDEROUS STATE

by Indran Amirthanayagam

Cartoon by Clay Jones

This is State murder 

even if unintended, 

rammed wrong,

bullets fired 

at a migrant 

driving.

What safety does 

a seatbelt provide,

or an airbag, 

when you drive 

below the speed limit

while a bullet

flies through 

the window?

What safety 

measures 

are advised for 

the migrant driving 

on American roads? 

To give way 

to unmarked cars? 

To stop 

in the middle 

of the road 

and wait? 

What allows 

the plain-clothed 

gunman to shoot 

without asking 

for papers, 

or screaming 

into a bullhorn?

What are 

the circumstances

when witnesses 

are hounded, 

threatened 

with deportation?

What if there are 

no witnesses,

certainly no inconvenient

bodycam imagery? 

We are confronted 

by an extrajudicial 

killing force. 

They don’t leave 

traces. They will 

be protected. 

THE STATE’S ALL,  folks.

Indran Amirthanayagam writes a Substack. He has just published Isla itinerante ( Editorial Apogeo, Peru, 2025) and White Space Sonnets ( Sarasavi publishers, Sri Lanka, 2025). His other publications include El bosque de deleites fratricidas ( RIL Editores), Seer (Hanging Loose Press),The Runner's Almanac (Spuyten Duyvil), Powèt Nan Pò A: Poet of the Port (Mad Hat), and Ten Thousand Steps Against the Tyrant (Broadstone Books). He is the translator of Kenia Cano’s Animal For The Eyes (Dialogos Books) and Origami: Selected Poems of Manuel Ulacia (Dialogos Books). He edits The Beltway Poetry Quarterly, hosts the Poetry Channel on YouTube, and publishes poetry books with Sara Cahill Marron at Beltway Editions.

LEARNING HER ABCs

by Madlynn Haber

A tiny girl, with sweet face, gentle features,

soft voice, recites her ABCs for me.

She learned them from an older, bolder cousin. 

The speech is hard for my aged ears to decipher. 

Mingled languages, English, Spanish, baby talk, 

an imitation of the elder cousin’s careful pronunciation. 

She smiles shyly, appreciating my attentive listening 

without noticing my lack of comprehension.

Her mother was not deported today.

 

The mother showed up at the immigration center 

with the little girl in her arms. The fearful father 

stayed home. Bail money collected by well-meaning 

neighbors filled her pockets, just in case.

Sighs of relief as she returns with a four-month reprieve. 

The little one will know her letters and some numbers, 

in English, the language of the only home 

she's ever known, by the time she escorts her mother 

to the immigration office again in July.

Madlynn Haber is the author of Seasons of Sorrow and Joy (Metaphysical Fox Press, 2025). She lives in a cohousing community in Northampton, Massachusetts.Her writing has been published in many literary journals and anthologies including, Eunoia Review, Months to Years, Orenaug Mountain Poetry Journal, Bright Flash Literary Review, Sheila-Na-Gig and The Metaworker Literary Magazine.

NO KINGS ALLOWED

by DJ Benhaim

Cartoon by Omar Al Abdallat.

I.

In the beginning was asphalt.
And the word was protest.
And the word was pixelated,
buffering between freedom and feed.

A crowd of imperfect citizens
chants like a country relearning its name.
The chorus is improvised:
No kings allowed—no crowns, no conquerors,
no saviors in tailor-made sympathy.

Their voices ripple through barricades,
become algorithm, become echo—
a national heartbeat with a stutter.



II.

I have seen democracy drag itself
through a century of luminous slogans,
its reflection flickering in each broken screen.
Still insisting: I am not done.

Once, the Founders gathered by candlelight—
afraid of monarchs, afraid of mobs.
They drafted compromise as scripture,
named it law and order,
muttered prayers to Reason
as though Reason were a god inclined to listen.

Some nights I wonder:
who will amend the amendments,
who will serve the servants,
who will remind us that equality
was never intended to mimic sameness?



III.

—No Kings Allowed—
the maxim mutates through the crowd.
Each repetition, a revision:

No Kings (but maybe a firm hand).
No Kings (but someone must decide).
No Kings (unless it’s my kind).

The chant becomes confession.
The confession becomes commerce.
Every democracy finds its vendors.

A man sells T-shirts beside a food truck:
LIMITED EDITION FREEDOM.
The poet buys one—
because irony, still, is cheaper than hope.



IV.

O Republic,
child of contradiction—
you legislate mercy
and enforce it with tear gas.
You proclaim all men,
then redact the margins.
Your pledge is a mirror:
every mouth repeats it—
none can see its cracks.

Still,
you endure—
awkward and miraculous,
a choir harmonizing
in seventeen unresolved keys.



V.

Night closes in.
The crowd separates into numbers.
The flag waves like a faulty signal.

Somewhere, a migrant waits at the checkpoint,
a senator rehearses his talking points,
a teacher grades an essay on liberty
with a trembling red pen.

And the poet—our witness,
our reluctant chorus—
writes in the margin of his notebook:

We are not failing,
we are rehearsing.

He closes the book,
steps into the dark,
and feels the fragile promise
of a nation still deciding
whether freedom needs a throne—
or simply
a place to sit down and listen.

DJ Benhaim is an emerging poet from the Windy City—Chicago, Illinois, whose work explores current events, global awareness as well as Afro American culture and the preservation of its stories, history, and legacy. An avid supporter of the city’s spoken word and poetry community, he can often be found cycling along the lakefront, soaking up the sounds of local jazz and blues, or experimenting with a camera in hand. His work has appeared or is forthcoming in Sheila-Na-Gig’s AMPLIFY Anthology, Kinsman Quarterly, and African Writer Magazine.

THE TIPPING POINT

by Jill Rachel Jacobs

(Ode to an Unseen Migrant During Perilous Times)

 

When evil comes a knocking, 

it may arrive with a vengeance, or 

incognito, like some 

Bible-thumping

good ol’ Joe, 

humping a flag.

 

("What we've got here is a failure to communicate")

When rage is sadness and 

sadness is rage, and it becomes

impossible to distinguish the two,

it’s not surprising we may recoil,

hidden in the shadows of the 

reality of what has become 

the new normal. 

 

("But I don’t want to go among mad people")

Like a cancer gone undetected, 

metastasized, 

cell by cell, 

dividing 

conquering,

licking wounds,

stealing secrets, 

tempted by madness,

trying to make sense of 

how we have now become 

that which we once loathed.

 

("Thank you, Sir, May I have another?")

 

When horror is contained, 

darkness has lifted, 

emerging from the underbelly,

dreams intact, 

still blinded by the 

innocence of children’s eyes, 

resting comfortably;

We wait.

 

("We have learned to see the world in gasps")

Unencumbered by reason,

justice now a luxury, 

in a world unrecognizable,

where compassion no longer prevails.

 

(How long? An hour, a year, a lifetime or two?)

 

When will we say when?

When prey becomes the predator,

When captors are held captive,

When cage doors are flung wide open.

Jill Rachel Jacobs is a New York based writer, poet whose poetry has been featured in numerous journals. Her features, commentaries, interviews have been published in The New York Times, Reuters, The Independent, The Washington Post, The Boston Globe, The Los Angeles Times, The San Francisco Chronicle, The New York Post, Newsday, The Philadelphia Inquirer, The Chicago Tribune, NPR’s Marketplace and Morning Edition.

A NORMAL DAY IN MIDWEST AMERICA

by Michelle DeRose

A golden shovel after Frederick Joseph

 

 

The kind of news I can’t tell

Irish friends without shaking heads, asking me

how anyone sends children to school in America.

No laws in the aftermath, just lies about which

side the shooter’s on, new calls for the political will

for common sense but resignation that it

won’t happen. Here, one class of WMDs will be

free of all regulations, in homage to the

actual god who reigns above all—the gun.

To be free, great, and safe, we ask migrant or

homegrown? Stop at nothing to neutralize the

threat of brown parents who want care for their child.

Michelle DeRose is an embarrassed American who lives and writes in Grand Rapids, Michigan.

WAY OF LIFE FOR THREE YOUNG WOMEN

by Joanne Kennedy Frazer 

in observance of International Women’s Day

Elizabeth 

20 years old,

junior at an elite US university,

majors in physics.

Awarded a summer internship,

she will fly to Asia,

live at a Japanese university

while conducting research.

 

 

Gabriella

tiene 20 años,

completed high school, 

college beyond reach,

worked menial village jobs

until employment options dried up.

She will travel a perilous journey 

to the US in search of new opportunities. 

 

 

Bahija

تبلغ من العمر 20 عاما

student at college

on a campus now rubble, 

her family is no more, all slaughtered.

Hunger, destruction, death are her relatives.

When bombings start she runs to unsafe shelters

pleading with the world, why are you not helping us?

Author’s Note: UN International Women's Day, March 8, occurs during Women's History Month.  The UN resolution declares "full enjoyment of human rights...(requires women's) active participation, equality and development..." To honor its intention, I imagine and enter into the stories of three women "internationally" to illustrate vast differences in their lived experiences. While there has been modest advancement in some parts of the world, we have a long way to go globally in realizing the UN resolution.

 

Joanne Kennedy Frazer, a former justice and peace educator/director for faith based entities, enjoys spending her silvering years writing poetry and publishing in numerous anthologies, journals, and ezines. Her work is informed by social justice concerns and beauty of the natural world. She has written two chapbooks. Most recently, Seasonings (Kelsay Press) has been nominated for the Eric Hoffer Book Award.  She lives in Durham, NC.

SALMAN

by Indran Amirthanayagam

Indran Amirthanayagam's newest book is Ten Thousand Steps Against the Tyrant (BroadstoneBooks). 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 writes in English, Spanish, French, Portuguese, Haitian Creole and has twenty poetry books as well as a music album Rankont Dout. He edits The Beltway Poetry Quarterly and helps curate Ablucionistas. He won the Paterson Prize and received fellowships from The Foundation for the Contemporary Arts, New York Foundation for the Arts, US/Mexico Fund For Culture, and the MacDowell Colony. He hosts the Poetry Channel on YouTube and publishes poetry books with Sara Cahill Marron at Beltway Editions.

ALL-AMERICAN CANAL

by D. Seth Horton

All-American Canal seen here in Imperial County, California, January 24, 2022. Photo: Matthew Bowler to accompany “Officials doing little as more migrants drown in Imperial County canal,” KPBS, February 8, 2022.

Border Patrol

operator

spotted

All-American

Canal in Calexico

agent

23 seconds

later not

advancing

55 seconds

still struggling

sank

below

canal's current

surface

Author’s Note: This is a found poem sourced from a recent U.S. Customs and Border Patrol media release. It is part of a larger project on resisting Federal interpretations of the U.S.-Mexico borderlands. In terms of composition, I deleted most of the original material until I was left with the poem that had previously been hidden within the bureaucratese.  To be clear, I added no words, punctuation, or capital letters to the body of this poem, nor did I change the original word order in any way.  Instead, I simply erased what was in the way and then moved the words that remained into appropriate line breaks. In case readers are interested in comparing this poem against the original source material, they can click here.

 

A writer and scholar focused mostly on the borderlands, D. Seth Horton’s work has appeared in more than forty publications, including the Michigan Quarterly Review and Glimmer Train. Two of his stories have been nominated for the Pushcart Prize. His latest book is a forthcoming collection of stories set throughout the U.S.-Mexico borderlands entitled On a NASA Flight to Heaven (TCU Press, 2024). Seth currently teaches creative writing and American literature at the University of Virginia. 

ADVENT

by Rachel Mallalieu




In the end, it won’t be the red
Starbucks cups or people who

Say happy holidays instead of
Merry Christmas, not

Ubiquitous Santa and his elves,
with no manger in sight

It’s video of a caged child who
writhes on a bench

Falls facedown and vomits
blood onto the floor

Staggers towards a toilet,
slumps to the ground

And convulses
then stills

That wages the war on Christmas


Rachel Mallalieu is an Emergency Physician and mother of five. She writes poetry in her spare time. Her work has been featured in TheNewVerse.News, Blood and Thunder and is upcoming in Haunted Waters Press.

ANOTHER GUATEMALAN CHILD

by Jan Steckel

A 16-year-old boy died Monday at a Border Patrol station in Texas, becoming the fifth child from Guatemala to die since December after being apprehended by US border patrol agents. —Yahoo! News, May 21, 2019. Photo: People hold a vigil for migrants who have died, have been detained and deported by US authorities, near the US-Mexico border fence in Playas de Tijuana, Mexico, on May 3, 2019 (AFP Photo/Guillermo Arias via Yahoo! News).

With the name, they release
a face, a family, a story,
but not a living child.

Five dead kids in five months.
Only half the migrants
are from Guatemala,

but all the dead children are.
What are the odds?
(1/2)5 or 1 out of 32.

Are they sicker?
Poorer? More fragile?
Indigenous? Dark?

Did they beg
in Mayan tongues,
so pleas were ignored?

In the hospital.
In the ICU.
Alone in his cell.

Pneumonia. Influenza.
She died of a fever,
and no one could save her.

By Stephen Miller’s bed,
small ghosts cry
for their mothers.

Jan Steckel is a former pediatrician who stopped practicing medicine because of chronic pain. Her latest poetry book Like Flesh Covers Bone (Zeitgeist Press, December 2018) is a finalist for poetry in the Bi Book Awards. Her poetry book The Horizontal Poet (Zeitgeist Press, 2011) won a 2012 Lambda Literary Award. Her fiction chapbook Mixing Tracks (Gertrude Press, 2009) and poetry chapbook The Underwater Hospital (Zeitgeist Press, 2006) also won awards. Her fiction and poetry have appeared in Scholastic Magazine, Bellevue Literary Review, TheNewVerse.News, November 3 Club, Assaracus and elsewhere.

NOT MY SON

by Anna M. Evans

McAllen, Texas, June 2018

Last night a woman crossed the Southern border—
heat haze and scrub, to armed men with blank faces
and rumors of a presidential order.

She had a baby with her who adored her
and sang him lullabies of safer spaces
last night. This woman crossed the Southern border

leaving her town of ruin and disorder
because she trusted others knew what grace is,
and hadn't heard the presidential order.

She didn't fear the men who came toward her,
explaining she would be one of their cases
last night. This woman crossed the Southern border

and begged asylum. First, the men ignored her,
then warned the women to stay in their places
while they enforced the presidential order.

No mi hijo! the refugee implored, her
stricken mind confused by legal phrases.
Last night a mother crossed our Southern border.
We took her son by presidential order.

Anna M. Evans’ poems have appeared in the Harvard Review, Atlanta Review, Rattle, American Arts Quarterly, and 32 Poems. She gained her MFA from Bennington College and is the Editor of the Raintown Review. Recipient of Fellowships from the MacDowell Artists' Colony and the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, and winner of the 2012 Rattle Poetry Prize Readers' Choice Award, she currently teaches at West Windsor Art Center and Rowan College at Burlington County. Her new collection Under Dark Waters: Surviving the Titanic is out now from Able Muse Press, and her sonnet collection Sisters & Courtesans is available from White Violet Press.

STREETS OF RIO BRAVO

by Jan Steckel

A Border Patrol agent shot and killed a woman who had crossed the border illegally near Laredo, Tex., on Wednesday after the officer came under attack, federal authorities said. —The New York Times, May 24, 2018. Photo: A border fence in Laredo, Tex., not far from where a Border Patrol agent fatally shot a woman on Wednesday who the authorities said had illegally crossed the border. Credit: Tamir Kalifa for The New York Times.

As I walked out on the streets of Rio Bravo,
As I walked out in Rio Bravo one day,
I spied a body all wrapped up in Mylar,
Covered with Mylar, as cold as the clay.

I saw by ICE milling that she was a migrant.
Marta Martinez was filming that day.
Marta Martinez, she held up her cell phone,
Yelled at the agents who murdered the girl.

Why are you maltreating them?
What have they done to you?
You shot that girl, she yelled,
Now she’s lying there dead.

We only tased her, claimed one of the ICE men.
Tased her! snorted Marta. You shot her!
She’s lying there stone cold. She attacked us,
Said the ICE men, with blunt objects.

What blunt objects? demanded Marta,
As the ICE men dragged three campesinos
Out of the trees and into their wagon.
Plastic water bottles? I don’t see any rocks.

They were running from you when you shot,
Cried Marta in anger. She’s somebody’s daughter,
Sister, maybe mother. It’s hard to tell how old
She was with half her face shot off.

Beat the drum slowly and play the fife lowly,
Play the dead march as we carry her along.
Down in the green valley, lay the sod over her.
She was a young migrant they said had done wrong.


Jan Steckel was a Harvard- and Yale-trained pediatrician who took care of Spanish-speaking children until chronic pain persuaded her to change professions to writer, poet and medical editor. She is an activist for bisexual and disability rights who lives in Oakland, California. Her poetry book The Horizontal Poet (Zeitgeist Press, 2011) won a 2012 Lambda Literary Award. Her fiction chapbook Mixing Tracks (Gertrude Press, 2009) and poetry chapbook The Underwater Hospital (Zeitgeist Press, 2006) also won awards. Her creative writing has appeared in Scholastic Magazine, Yale Medicine, Bellevue Literary Review, and elsewhere. Her work won the Goodreads Newsletter Poetry Contest, a Zeiser Grant for Women Artists, the Jewel by the Bay Poetry Competition, Triplopia’s Best of the Best competition, and three Pushcart nominations.

PROFESSOR FROM DAMASCUS

by Devon Balwit 

Image via Pinterest.

He places his hand on his heart, says Shukran
            for the English lesson,

this specialist in childhood education, their earliest
            formation, in a country

where children scavenge rubble or carry bodies
            of wounded siblings.

He has written six books, he says, six, his hand on his heart.
            this is creative, my talent,

the words delivered with gentle precision, the delicacy of one
            who works with children.

My other students listen politely from a distance, teenagers
            from Japan, Chile, Azerbaijan.

None of us know what it cost him to share our white desks
            at this school in Oregon,

know the Syrian children ruined in Aleppo, while his heart beats
            beneath fingers as he says Shukran.

Devon Balwit is a poet from Portland, Oregon.  Her poetry has appeared before in TheNewVerse.News as well as in other journals.

OPERATION SOPHIA

by Jill Crainshaw

through soul-searing saharan sands
into a mythical sea of many names
she brought forth her eighth-born child and
named her
sophia
wisdom
“migrant”
NOUN: an animal that migrates
ADJECTIVE: tending to migrate, “migrant birds”
“migrant boat sinks” migrant people
fleeing seeking flight
“I was ready to die with my unborn child”
roving
nomadic
wandering
traveling
drifting
through intense shivering waves of
fear-refracted deeps
dictionaried definitions designate
describe
determine the “nature, scope or meaning of”
headlines desperate “dozens feared
drowned” in jonah’s great sea
politico-poetic
burial ground
birthing waters of
wisdom

Jill Crainshaw is a professor at Wake Forest University School of Divinity. Her poems have appeared in *82 Review and Five Magazine and in an anthology by Wicwas Press. She is also the author of a number of books on worship and theology.

THE MIGRANT

by Afzal Moolla





Seeking solace.
Seeking a home.

The migrant

finds
rotten prejudice
fungal anger.

The migrant

alone hoping for
a solitary chance
to belong.

The migrant

alone always
an outside entity
eternal outcast
viral threat
reeking odour.

The migrant

ever alone
and alone knowing
that no place exists
but that lost home.


Afzal Moolla was born in Delhi, India while his parents were in exile, working as political exiles against Apartheid in South Africa. He then traveled wherever his parent’s work took them, spending time in Egypt, Finland, and Iran. Afzal works and lives in Johannesburg, South Africa.

SNEAKING ACROSS THE BORDER

by Linda Lerner

The author's father's family.

He never spoke of what it was like
those three years in Amsterdam
waiting to get to America

and I never asked….
I heard about it from her, not him

he & I lived in separate countries;
there was no crossing over, not then;
day after day I read about those thousands
of migrant children…. many 17 and younger…

and I hear my mother’s voice from
before I was ready to listen, only 17 when his father
forced him to join a group of youths
fleeing Russian pogroms…

In an album she left me are photos of
the family he’d never see again…

using their story I sneak across the border;
among the children coming thru Mexico,
Central America, some drowning or getting shot

I see that Russian boy
standing with others who made it here
forced to explain  WHY  what
he’ll be asking himself his whole life


A chapbook of Linda Lerner’s poems using nursery rhymes as a taking off place Ding Dong The Bell Pussy in the Well, illustrated by Donna Kerness was published by Lummox Press, in Feb. 2014. Her next full length collection Yes, the Ducks Were Real will be published by New York Quarterly books in Fall 2014.