THE NAME ON THE LIST

by Rajat Chandra Sarmah 

India Cut 130 Million From Voter Roll, Fueling Protests Against Modi: Public anger is growing over an exercise that critics say undermines the world’s largest democracy, particularly disenfranchising Muslims under the Hindu nationalist government. —The New York Times, October 6, 2026

Someone went looking for his name.

It had been there before—
among thousands of other names,
quietly printed,
waiting for a finger
to find it.

This time,
the finger moved down the page
and stopped.

Nothing.

He looked again,
then once more,
as if another reading
might put the name back.

Outside, something was changing
across the country.

Young people had begun
to gather in the streets.

What had been spoken quietly
inside drawing rooms
was now moving towards the road.

People who had watched in silence
were finding one another,
coming together in numbers
that could no longer be ignored.

Questions that once stayed indoors
were now being carried outside.

Who decides
whose name remains?

Who checks the list
before the list becomes
the truth?

In some places,
victory and defeat
stood closer than expected,
while the list
had grown shorter.

Numbers that once fitted
quietly into a column
now carried the weight
of people.

Petitions reached the court.
Dates were fixed,
then moved.

An election waited
for an answer
that had not yet arrived.

The anger spread.

People who had stood apart
were now filling the streets,
thousands upon thousands,
no longer willing
to remain apart.

Barricades went up.
Roads were closed.
Notices appeared.

The crowd was asked
to turn back.

But the streets kept filling.

Not everyone agreed
on what had happened.

Still, too many people
had begun to ask
whether the institutions
they had trusted
were still listening.

For years,
trust needed no proof.

You entered a polling booth,
pressed a button,
and went home.

Now people were looking
more closely at what happened
before a vote became a number,
and who was responsible
for what came after.

Something once taken for granted
was becoming visible:

the distance between
a citizen's faith
and the institution
that asks for it.

He folded the paper.

His name was still missing.

There was no way to know
who had taken it away.

For the first time,
he understood
that finding it again
might require more
than going to the polling booth.

Rajat Chandra Sarmah is a writer from Assam, India, and the author of eight books. His poetry and prose have appeared in literary journals and publications in India and internationally. He is a previously published contributor to The New Verse News and has received several literary awards and recognitions.

THE LAND REMEMBERS THEIR NAMES

by Ahmed Dremly 

The ground was silent that morning.

Not empty—

silent.

It carried beneath its chest

the weight of a family,

the dreams of children,

the hands of mothers,

the footsteps of those

who once walked upon it.

The sky stood above Gaza,

wide and uncertain,

as if even the heavens

did not know where to place their grief.

After one thousand and ninety-nine days,

the earth opened her hands.

Not to take them,

but to return them.

One hundred and twelve souls

from the Abu Sharia family

rose from beneath the rubble—

doctors,

engineers,

mothers,

fathers,

children,

infants.

A whole family

written back into the memory of the land.

Gaza did not receive bodies that day.

She received names.

A mother of five stood on a rooftop,

holding flowers,

candies,

and the tears she could not hide.

She called to the sky:

Long live the martyrs.

A child who lost both parents

looked through a broken window.

The world was shattered before his eyes,

yet his voice remained:

For you, Palestine.

A man who survived

the death of everyone he loved

carried the remains of his family—

bones, photographs, memories.

He carried a universe

inside his wounded hands.

And he said:

The martyrs do not die.

An uncle who buried fifteen hearts

raised his voice:

Allah Akbar.

Not as a farewell,

but as a promise.

This land knows our footsteps.

This soil knows our names.

We live here.

We die here.

The streets of Gaza filled again.

Not only with mourning,

but with thousands of hands

reaching for the flag-covered bodies,

fighting for the honor

of carrying those

who carried Gaza before them.

Coffee was poured beside graves.

Stories were shared beside ruins.

And every wound

opened another memory.

Today,

the rubble has finally spoken.

It returned the last words

of those who rested beneath it.

Those who protected the earth,

and were protected by it.

Today, Gaza wears her grief

like an ancient dress.

And the land whispers:

They were never buried beneath me.

They were planted.

And I will remember their names.

Author’s note: The poem was inspired by the funeral held today for 112 members of the Abu Sharia family in Gaza, whose remains were recovered from beneath the rubble more than two years after they were killed. 308 members of the family were killed, while the remains of only 112 have been recovered. They were my neighbors, and I knew many of them personally.

Ahmed Dremly is a journalist from Gaza whose writings have appeared in Middle East Eye, Mondoweiss, The Electronic Intifada, The Intercept, Al-Monitor, and other publications. He is currently studying in Italy after leaving Gaza in May 2026.

DOROTHY LOWAKUTUK

by Terri Kirby Erickson 

 

 

Reteti Elephant Sanctuary in Northern Kenya was established to rescue and release orphaned and abandoned elephant calves. It was featured recently by the AP and on PBS.

 

 

They follow her or she follows them, the babies

of Reteti. Swinging their miniature trunks, they 

navigate the steep and dusty terrain not far from 

the elephant sanctuary—all the while listening 

for her voice and the voices of other keepers. 

These calves are like little children let loose 

in the playground, nowhere near ready to be

released in the wild. Most carry the memory 

of a mother’s disappearance, some brutally so. 

Others less dramatic. But a lost mother, how-

ever it occurs, is no small thing. When I found

my mother dying beneath her favorite azalea 

bush, I sank to my knees crying, Mommy, what 

happened? and I was no baby. Nothing prepares 

us for losing our mothers, the loneliness of grief. 

But Dorothy Lowakutuk learned the language 

of elephants. She knows which of them is Sera,

Long’uro, or Sarara—how they play and walk 

and sleep. She teaches them to roll in the dust to 

keep their skin cool, find plants that are safe to

eat. Humble, yet as regal as a queen, Dorothy 

Lowakutuk’s face is radiant as the African sun, 

this kind woman and all the rest at Reteti who

talk softly, feed and sing to the children of lost 

mothers. Blessed be—blessed be their names.

 

Terri Kirby Erickson is the author of eight full-length collections of poetry, including The Light that Follows Us Home (Autumn, 2026, Press 53). Her work has been widely published and has won numerous awards, including the Joy Harjo Poetry Prize, Annals of Internal Medicine Poetry Prize, International Book Award for Poetry, and the Tennessee Williams Poetry Prize. She lives in North Carolina, USA.

SAY THEIR NAMES

by Pamela Kenley-Meschino

Rep. Jared Moskowitz (D-Fla.) on Tuesday read aloud a passage of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem’s memoir in which she describes shooting her pet dog, Cricket, during a committee markup on a bill related to deporting migrants who harm animals. —The Hill, November 18, 2025

She killed the dog, he said,

reading from her own words,

shot a puppy not yet grown,

its unruliness put down.

 

Fourteen months young,

he spoke the name so we could

witness her transgression,

not the puppy’s—Cricket.

 

Some snickered at the obvious,

a killer of dogs in charge,

rounding up castaways

for gravel pits unknown. 

 

It’s no joke.

 

Some countered stories

from the other side, 

of beagles left behind in labs,

abuse for an abuse.

 

What about that?

 

All agreed that dogs must

not be harmed. 

Save them all from 

cruelty’s bloody hands.

 

We vouch for Cricket’s rights

as we shout for human rights,  

to live without fear or discrimination.

We need to say all their names.

 

She killed the dog; in her own 

words, she hated the dog.

 

Pamela Kenley-Meschino is originally from the UK, where she developed a love of nature, poetry, and music, thanks in part to the influence of her Irish mother. She is an educator whose classes explore the connection between writing and healing, as well as the importance of shared stories.

DAUGHTERS

by Clare Richardson-Barlow

Judith Butler

Amid all the other breaking news consuming the United States this month, the University of California, Berkeley, arguably the nation’s most elite public university, gave the Trump administration a list of 160 names of faculty, staff and students, as part of an investigation into “alleged antisemitic incidents”. While all the names on this list are significant, one name in particular that UC Berkeley handed over to the Trump administration stands out: Judith Butler, the eminent queer theorist, literary theorist and philosopher, and one of the most famous public intellectuals in the United States today. In addition to Butler’s name representing one of the most high-profile academic scalps demanded by the Trump administration in its campaign against higher education so far, Butler’s name is also notable for another reason: Butler is proudly and publicly Jewish, and has written extendively about their Jewish identity and how it informs their politics. In the name of “fighting antisemitism”, the Trump administration is publicly making an example out of arguably the most famous Jewish public intellectual in the country today. —The Guardian, September 22, 2025

They pass the names along,
as though paper could hold a body.
Butler’s among them—
the one who told us
gender is a stage,
a script rehearsed until it feels like bone.

Now the government calls their name,
writes it as accusation,
as though thought itself
were treason.

I think of the mothers in Palestine,
their daughters’ names whispered
to checkpoints and borders,
written into files,
circulated in offices
where no one sees their faces.
A name becomes a burden to carry,
a permission denied.

Butler compared it to Kafka—
to McCarthy, to lists, to silence—
and I believe them.
A list is never just a list.
It is the beginning of forgetting
and the rehearsal of fear.

And still,
I return to the crib
where my baby curls her hand around mine,
her pudgy fist the size of a plum.
She cannot ask yet what it means to be a girl,
but already the world
is writing her story,
already she is among the daughters
who must learn to abide.

Butler’s voice is not just theirs.
It is the echo of every woman
who has been told to hush,
every mother
who has watched her child’s name
crossed out by a hand of power.

What is silenced will not stay silent.
What is written down
will be read again.
Even in exile,
even in mourning,
Her many voices endure—
not performance,
but song.

Clare Richardson-Barlow is a writer, political economist, and lecturer at the University of Leeds. Her work spans academic, policy, and creative forms, with a focus on climate, energy, and justice. Before academia, she worked in Washington, D.C. think tanks on international policy. Her poetry and essays often explore womanhood, memory, and myth, especially how women’s voices are silenced and reimagined as strength. Originally from Oregon, she now lives in Yorkshire.