SNOW WHITE VISITS JAIL FOR A PHOTO OP

by Michelle DeRose

Kristi Noem wears gold Rolex to inspect tattooed inmates at El-Salvador mega-prison —Yahoo! news, March 28, 2025

Everything so black and white.
Her long-sleeved tee, teasingly tucked.
Black ball cap, curled tresses.
Their shirtless tattoos lined up
an aisle of canned beans.
Shaven heads beneath harsh lights.
A long shot—men stacked
like face-masked firewood in the hold.
Her lipstick. Gold around her wrist.
Their cuffs. Her arsenal.

Professor Emerita of English, Michelle DeRose lives and writes in Michigan, where one of the most prestigious state universities in the nation just announced its closure of its DEI offices. She wishes she were Canadian.

NEW CALEDONIA NATIVES FIGHT FOR RIGHTS

by Lavinia Kumar

New Caledonia has been under French control since 1853. The indigenous Kanak population, who make up approximately 40% of the territory’s 270,000 residents, has long sought independence from France. The 1998 Nouméa Accord provided a framework for gradual autonomy and promised three referendums on independence. The first two referendums in 2018 and 2020 saw close results against independence, while the third in 2021, heavily boycotted by pro-independence groups due to the COVID-19 pandemic, resulted in an overwhelming vote to remain part of France. The recent violence erupted after the French National Assembly approved a constitutional amendment allowing French citizens who have lived in New Caledonia for at least 10 years to vote in provincial elections. This change is viewed by pro-independence leaders and most Kanaks as a threat to Kanak representation, as it could significantly increase the number of pro-France and non-indigenous voters. —Mirage, May 23, 2024. Photo: Police forces pushed back rioters near a shopping center in Dumbéa Sur Mer, New Caledonia, on Wednesday. Credit: Bruno Favre/EPA, via Shutterstock and The New York Times, May 22, 2024.

3000 BC is when Kanaks made home

in the west Pacific, in Oceana,

          south of Papua New Guinea, 

          north of New Zealand.

 

10,000-miles-away-France, took over

the islands in1853, parked its prisoners,

          destroyed crops of the Kanaks,

          forced labor, and brought disease.

 

1854 marked the discovery of nickel,

began years of foreign mine expansion –

            nearly ten mining sites –

            one selling nickel to car-maker Tesla.

 

A 1998 Accord enscribed island voting rights. 

Then 40,000 more French arrived, and

          today rights undone by Paris law—

          expanded migrant voting, diluting Kanaks.*

 

Today Caledonia’s nickel is third in world.

Today Kanaks have no control over the mines.

Today Paris has sent President, ministers, 3000 troops, police.

Today Kanaks block roads, fight for freedom.

* President Emmanuel Macron says he will not force through a controversial voting reform in the French Pacific territory of New Caledonia following deadly rioting. Speaking on a visit to the main island, Mr Macron said local leaders should engage in dialogue to find an alternative agreement for the archipelago's future. —BBC, May 23, 2024

Lavinia Kumar writes in New Jersey.  Her latest poem is here.

WHERE NO ONE COUNTS

by Lynn White

Source: The Guardian

When will we count the dead in Gaza?
Those buried in named graves we know, 
all the tens of thousands of them,
those buried in the rubble,
the disappeared 
with no one left to name them,
are still unknown
uncounted.

Then the other Disappeared,
prisoners of war
if it were a war,
but with only the rights
of terrorists
who have no rights at all
in this unequal conflict
that some call ‘war’.

And how can we count the injured in Gaza
when there are no hospitals left
and its people don’t count
so no one can count those numbers.
and perhaps no one will
in a country where people don’t count.

Now the starved and starving 
have joined them,
the bags of baby bones
the unaccounted numbers
of intentional famine
in Gaza where still
no one counts.

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.

FRONT LINES

by Eileen Ivey Sirota

The governor of Alabama on Friday signed into law two controversial bills: one that criminalizes healthcare providers who offer gender-affirming care to transgender youth and another that requires students to use bathrooms that match the gender on their birth certificates. Kay Ivey, a Republican, said she “believed very strongly that if the Good Lord made you a boy, you are a boy, and if he made you a girl, you are a girl”. The anti-gender-affirming care bill, described as the first legislation of its kind in the US, makes it a felony punishable by up to 10 years in prison to provide medical care including hormone treatment and puberty blockers to minors. It also includes bans on gender-affirming surgeries for transgender youth, which are extremely rare, and compels school personnel to disclose to a parent or guardian that a “minor’s perception of his or her gender or sex is inconsistent with the minor’s sex”. —The Guardian, April 8, 2022

We will fight them on the

beaches    we will fight them in

 

the sandbox    these tiny

terrorists, the little boys

 

with nail polish, a spangly pony

and a special Barbie.

 

We have God on our side

He who surely must have sanctified

 

the hand of the doctor filling out

the birth certificate.  We have

 

George Orwell on our side to

inspire our marketing team.

 

We’ll call it de-nazification, no,

we’ll call it parental support, no,

 

wait, we’ll call it The Vulnerable Child

Compassion and Protection Act.

 

No more shelter in the demilitarized

school nurse’s office.  We’ll make It a crime

 

to slow the inexorable hands of time

bringing forth an unwanted body.

 

In this holy war

No prisoners are too small.

 

Eileen Ivey Sirota is a psychotherapist and a poet.  Her chapbook Out of Order was published by Finishing Line Press in 2020.  Her poems have been published in District Lines, Beltway Poetry Quarterly, Lighten Up, The New Verse News, Ekphrastic Review, The Poeming Pigeon, Calyx, and Voices:  The Art and Science of Psychotherapy. She lives in Bethesda, MD with her husband and an ever-shifting blend of rage and wonder.

SHELTER II

by Corey Weinstein

    at the foot of Sinai

Meandering through our sheltered lives of isolation
A fortnight and forty nine mark the days of our trek
Weeks weeping with news, sidewalks burdened by tents
Safer than starving migrant workers tramping home
More generous than gang youth herded into gladiator pits
Than daughters crying goodbye through computer screens
This trudge of my safety through a retreat of comfort
I look to those who have endured decades locked
down in eight by ten concrete and steel tombs
They at my right arm of justice, left of compassion
My teachers of confinement, five decades at their knee
Bang on my pipe, whisper somethings into my vent
Fly me a kite on a string through others’ hands
Design my program from wake up to bed down
Rise for tea and slow stretch and slower meditation
Gratitude, healing, love, praise, respect for the elders
Eat, walk, write, trash, eat, read, tidy, rehearse, eat,
dishes, news, read, TV, lockup, gray head weekly shop
Make sure the canteen is paid up and shelves are full
Decaf black, Rooibos, Hawthorne, Lemon Verbena
Sleepy Time, chocolate, hummus, cabernet—the essentials
Make sure the letters are written, calls made, people loved.
Boredom, comfort and routine seem too much the same
As the new moon brings us cowering to the foot of Sinai
We descendants of Noah through Shem enter full footed into
hallways of the breathless dying, and acres of coffin digs
More black men officially murdered, again and again
Exploding into the rage of youth, of those left further behind
How can we find the radiance borne of inner wisdom, of hope
Of gratitude or new knowledge, of being touched by the ineffable
We cover up while societies are unmasked, still and always
Worse for the worst off, and not so good for me either.

Corey Weinstein is a retired physician who works for the human rights of prisoners. He is founder of California Prison Focus that advocates for prisoners in long term solitary confinement. He has published two CDs of music largely inspired by the klezmer and Yiddish stage musical traditions and has written and produced a play in song staged in 2016 in commemoration of the 75th anniversary of the massacre at Babi Yar. His poetry has been published in Jewish Currents, Vista and Byways, and Forum (City College of San Francisco).

ANOTHER DEAD PRESIDENT

by Lee Patton

Just wait,
another long week of non-news—the demise itself,
long expected, the prepackaged obits, the lugubrious
commentaries on the long-gone context of his single term,
all of it muted in longing for “better days than ours,”
because the bar for presidential behavior is now so low
that all the deceased had to do was act the decent rich guy—
anything but behave like our intimate casino gangster.

But wait—
it’s just begun. There’ll be videotapes of stilted appearances,
recountings of his public service over and over and over—
with no such tributes to nurses, teachers, roadway flaggers,
restaurant servers, farmers, or home caregivers, no—
that’s not service. No, service is being vice to a treacly phony
who lied and lied to us. It’s voting against civil rights, demon-
izing minority prisoners and gays.  It’s staging bogus wars.

But wait—
there’s more, the body flown from Houston to DC
with solemn militarist salutes, the body lying in state
in some solemn capital venue, tearful attendees
and glimpses of best-forgotten dignitaries, then finally,
finally, for sure, the deposition of the body at a military
cemetery. Please, at last, let's just bury the poor old guy
to rest in peace.

Lee Patton, a Denverite, writes fiction, poetry, drama and commentary. Quarterlies that have published his work include Best New Writing 2012, The Threepenny Review, The Massachusetts Review, The California Quarterly,  Poetry Quarterly, Ellipsis, Hawaii-Pacific Review, Adirondack Review and Memoir Journal. His third novel, My Aim Is True, is out from Dreamspinner Press. "Faith of Power," a novella, appears in Main Street Rag's 2017 suspense anthology Stuck in the Middle.

$1 AN HOUR TO FIGHT LARGEST FIRE IN CA HISTORY

by Ann Bracken

About 1,500 inmates in California prisons are helping the state fight wildfires, including the Camp Fire, for several dollars a day. Yet after inmates with firefighting experience are released, doors at fire departments are often closed. Photo Credit: Stephen Lam/Reuters) —The New York Times, November 15, 2018

Because I’m a prisoner, I put my life on the line
for $2.00 a day + $1.00 an hour when I’m        fighting fires.
I’ve protected California
I saved thousands of dollars’ worth of property—

 I’ve got training in wildland firefighting.
And           I’d love to be a firefighter when I get out.
But I need a few fire science credits
                        &                                 some college courses.
The biggest problem staring me down?
I can’t get licensed
as an EMT
because I have a record.

What kind of sense does that make?
—if all my training and experience
is enough to fight fires          while I’m incarcerated,
it should be enough to fight fires                            once I’m free.

You know how I could live if I was a real firefighter?
I could give my children a sweet little house
Maybe even send them to college                       if I made the $74,000 a year
like a regular firefighter.

You know how I first got here?
I worked in the office, but after awhile,
I knew too much
so they moved me outside to work landscaping.
But I’m real allergic to poison oak.
So if I breathe poison oak in the air
my throat can close up
& I could die.             I figured I might as well be on the fire line if that was the case.

I didn’t volunteer to go to prison.
I didn’t volunteer to go to fire camp
and fight fires.
I volunteer to reduce my time—I
I want to go back to my family
to my children.

Ann Bracken is an activist with a pen. She’s started over more times than she can count and believes that she possesses a strong gene for reinvention driving her desire for change. She’s changed her job and her mind, but never wavers from her commitment to family, friends, writing, and social justice. She’s authored two poetry collections—The Altar of Innocence and No Barking in the Hallways: Poems from the Classroom, serves as a contributing editor for Little Patuxent Review, and co-facilitates a Wilde Readings Poetry Series in Columbia, MD. Her poetry, essays, and interviews have appeared in anthologies and journals, including Bared: Contemporary Poetry & Art on Bras & Breasts, Fledgling Rag, and Texture among others. Ann’s poetry has garnered two Pushcart Prize nominations. She offers writing workshops in prisons and community education centers.

THE YOUNG SOLDIERS OF GUANTANAMO

written on January 11, 2016, the fourteenth anniversary of the opening of Guantanamo Bay detention camp

by Buff Whitman-Bradley

Image source: Amnesty International: Guantanamo’s Poetry


I try to imagine the young soldiers

Given the job of interrogating

The prisoners of Guantanamo

I try to imagine them being repulsed

By what they were ordered to do

But afraid to disobey

I try to imagine the moral crises

They may have undergone

And the collateral damage to their souls

I try to imagine surreptitious rebellions of kindness

A smuggled pencil a friendly word a bit of extra food

A hand reaching out from the wreckage of the self

I try to imagine the nightmares of cruelty

Those young men carry with them

Into their civilian lives

For generations we have filled the haunted streets

With the discarded veterans

Of our perverse wars

For generations we have practiced the art

Of mangling the spirits

Of foe and friend alike

I try to imagine a world nearly here

Where torturers and tortured

Look as equals into each other's eyes

Where the young soldiers of Guantanamo

Come to realize they have more in common

With those they tortured than with those giving orders

Where the brutalized and debased and shattered

May howl their pain and rage

And their tormentors will not turn away

Where both will become healed and whole

From what was done to them and what they did

And will walk among us with great tenderness

Buff Whitman-Bradley's poetry has appeared in many print and online journals, including Atlanta Review, Bryant Literary Review, Concho River Review, Crannog, december, Hawai'i Review, Pinyon, Rockhurst Review, Solstice, Third Wednesday and others. He has published several collections of poems, most recently, To Get Our Bearings in this Wheeling World. His interviews with soldiers who refused to fight in Iraq and Afghanistan became the book About Face: Military Resisters Turn Against War. He lives in northern California with his wife Cynthia.

THREE STRIKES NO MORE

by Claire Day

On June 26, the United States Supreme Court ruled the federal Three-Strikes Law unconstitutional. In Johnson vs. United States, the Supreme Court held that the government violated Johnson’s due process by imposing an increased sentence under the Armed Career Criminal Act’s residual clause that was unconstitutionally vague, standard-less, and only enforceable arbitrarily. The ruling elaborated that two elements constitute the vagueness of the law: 1) by assessing risk of a case using fictitious crime rather than using real-world statistics, and 2) ambiguity regarding the amount of risk necessary to qualify a crime as a violent felony. In other words, assessment of risk of future violent crime by an individual is unpredictable and uncertain, and has not historically been applied consistently. Supreme Court Justice Scalia delivered the opinion of the Court, joined by Roberts, Ginsburg, Breyer, Sotomayor, and Kagan, while Kennedy and Thomas concurred in the judgment. Justice Alito filed the sole dissenting opinion. —National Center for Due Process, July 6, 2015

There used to be a row of firs
lined up against the fence
limbs outstretched to intertwine
and guard the narrow yard like jailers,
block access to the light

There are prisoners
who never move beyond the confines of their bars
and see the sun
they live in tiny spaces
meant to squash the soul

The trees are down now
their rule long gone

Grass sings
flowers surge in summer hues
grapes dally on the vine

And breathe the smell of freedom


Claire Day lives in western Massachusetts, in an area where writing is virtually a way of life. After writing prose for several decades and both participating in and facilitating writing workshops,she has discovered the joys of poetry. She enjoys its economy of words, its lack of distracting verbage, and most of all, its ability to enter the mind and heart.

THE PRISONS

by Howard Winn

Image source: Credit Family Caregiver Alliance via WVTF

are full of old men serving time.
What to do about them
has become a penitent issue.
The punishment of young men,
or middle-aged men
has become
what do the frail and sick
criminals deserve as they age.
Eternal puritan punishment,
handcuffed to hospital beds,
tied to oxygen tubes to the nose
until death do them part?
Was that the original decision
of judge and jury?
Give them walkers for the exercise yard?
Attach them to dialysis until dead?

Most recently Howard Winn had poems and fiction published in The Dalhousie Review, Descant (Canada), Cactus Heart, Main Street Rag, Caduceus, Burning Word,  Pennsylvania Literary Journal. Southern Humanities Review, Cutting Edgz andBorderlands. His B. A. is from Vassar College. His graduate degree is from the Writing Program at Stanford University. His doctoral work was done at New York University. He is a State University of New York faculty member.

TO DENNIS RODMAN

by Rick Gray





Dennis, I hate to interrupt your cry
but the prisoners are ringing in my ears
and demanding I offer you another trip, or at least a smack.
They don't care if your piercing ruins my anonymous hand,

They are worked to death, and have been waiting for years for this.
There's no courts in the camps, though I hear the nets are everywhere.
Only the guards get to shoot. Dennis, I can't let them down.
Just like you cried, "I'm sorry. I'm just trying to help."

What's it like being so cool and eccentric?
Even when you say "I'm sorry" it sounds so ironic,
like your pink wedding dress. Marriage and divorce must be jokes
when you get to hang court side like Nicholson with the Dope.

Here's their suggestion, Dennis.
Instead of me hitting you, which you won't even feel,
The prisoners want you to play for real next time.
No more games. You go to a prison camp and just sit in solitary

and keep your metal smirk shut.
We'll do it it like the Aztecs.
If you eventually crack and start blubbering tears to the press, you lose,
and the prisoners cut off your famous head and have a ball.


Rick Gray has work currently appearing in Salamander and has an essay forthcoming in the book, Neither Here Nor There: An Anthology of Reverse Culture Shock. He served in the Peace Corps in Kenya and teaches in Kabul, Afghanistan.

JAIL BIRDS

by Ed Shacklee

Artist: Marcus A. Bedford, Jr. (K-00220, Y-Wing 204L, P.O. Box 689 Central Fac., Soledad, CA 93960)
Image source: “Comix from Inside” at The Real Cost of Prisons

A captive flock, a clip-winged throng
Whose fledglings start to lose their song
So cheery in the nest, its tone
So much like children of our own,

Their rookeries are known for squalor.
Jurists never see their color
Is all too often blacks and browns,
Though cartoons show them striped like clowns;

Now caged in millions, hard to tame,
Just strings of numbers for a name
Who must make do without another,
But answered once to sister, brother.


Ed Shacklee is a public defender who represents young people in the District of Columbia. His poems have appeared in Angle, Contra, The Flea, Light and Lucid Rhythms, among other places.