THE INEQUITY OF JUSTICE

A Sestina

by Lucille Gang Shulklapper

Dreams die in the blood of children,                                          

embryos born from the seeds of sorrow,

the milk of starvation, the torture

of chains and broken bones, the searching

of scorched earth; of survival as the “other.”

Mother and child, deported, disappear.

A cancer-ridden toddler and his mother disappear.
The video follows the mother, struggling to free her child
from the chains that bind them to “others,”
to the brutal and inhumane soldiers, deaf to sorrow,
prodding them toward a military plane, after searching
naked bodies with naked hatred as prodding guns torture
 
the nameless, bent and broken, then pack them in tortured
positions, until the engines roar, the plane lifts, and America disappears.
Activists march in the streets, carrying signs of protest, searching,
their eyes and ears alert to the danger of their neighbors. Children
and strangers in their midst, yet unaware of pain and sorrow, 
might be kidnapped, handcuffed, and thrown into cars with “others.”  
 
As if on cue, masked men swoop down upon “others,”
targets of skin and color, a mother and three daughters, tortured 
by HSI in their own home, left with smashed lives of fear and sorrow,
shivering in their underwear, in the rain, until the men with guns disappear,
leaving terror, and trauma cut with razor blades, on the backs of children
 looking for meaning in sleep, and awaken to desperate searching. 
 
Is there no end to a life whose desperate searching
leaves scars and barriers to block all “others,”
grieving as ICE hunts men, women, and children.?
The loss of deported loved ones enduring torture
affects human beings who mourn their disappearance,
and pursue justice in community and legal searches.?
 
Today, a Vermont man was not deported. Released from sorrow,
returning to his community which made, rehearsed, and researched 
plans to release him, they acted to assure his reappearance.
Hope returns with him, to all of us in helping “others”
escape the lawlessness of criminals in their acts of torturing
“Illegal aliens”, the name given to adults and innocent children.
 
            How much longer can children endure grief, sorrow, and torture?
Who will name these children? Why are they the “others”?  Has justice disappeared?

Lucille Gang Shulklapper is the published author of five chapbooks of poetry,  short stories, and picture books. Her work appears in journals, magazines, and online. She has taught reading from K-college, made recordings for the blind, and led workshops for The Florida Center for the Book, and others. Though she wrote from the age of six, she was never published until  the age of 60. Three decades later, she has started an Open Mic Poetry Program for her residential, and assisted living fellow retirees.   She lives in Boca Raton, Florida. 

SESTINA FOR THIS SCHOOL YEAR

by Jen Gupta

Cartoon by Mark Knight, Kids News, May 28, 2020.

Everything was in twos this year, 

split into a before and after: 

two versions of each kid, one virtual 

forehead, pale ceiling, one real— 

three dimensional and so loud, silence 

something they saved for their homes.

At first, school had no home

lived on a bed or kitchen table, a year 

where every one was a muted silence,

a vacant square and it wasn’t until after

the panic, that we all became real,

more than a nuisance, virtually

everything changed when we were virtual,

each student tucked into a different home

life, some warm and orderly some real 

terrible, some a black and blue year

hidden under a black square and after 

it ended, they stayed silent.

Even us teachers were silent,

working nights to make virtual

every paper worksheet, after 

all, we had nothing at home,

just head down waiting for the year

to end, wishing for children more real

and then, finally, they were real,

the shattering of silence 

like September at the end of the year,

voices piercing through the virtual

nightmare, everyone happy to leave home,

to feel smiles under their masks, after

so long apart, we were sensitive. After

it ended, we couldn’t believe we had really

seen the insides of each other’s homes,

killed time in so much silence,

only known each other as virtual

in this gritty imitation of a year.

After the silence of this virtual year, 

we found home in each real moment, 

in the noise of three dimensional bliss.

Jen Gupta (she/her) is a middle school English teacher, writer, avid hiker, and horse lover. She lives in Somerville, Massachusetts with her husband and their seven houseplants. Her work has been published in Anti-Heroin Chic and is forthcoming at Sledgehammer. 

BANNED WORDS

by Joan Colby

When words are banned freedom is vulnerable
As an undesired fetus.
Its existence is not an entitlement.
We thought freedom was science-based
Comprising the diversity
Of race, religion, gender, even the transgender

Of nuance. Not written in stone, transgender
Employs choice in a  way that is vulnerable
To the notion of diversity.
Imagine that a fetus
Could be both science-based
And mystical. An existence less an entitlement

Than a desire. Those who feel entitled
To condemn the idea of transgender
Don’t reckon with what can be science-based
Or perception. If even language is vulnerable
To such dictates-- say the personhood of the fetus—
Then all political diversity

Will be challenged. The world is nothing if not diverse
As Darwin proved. Shape was not an entitlement
But subject to mutation like a fetus
That could be male, female or a transgender
Complexity once entirely vulnerable
To the decisions of science-based

Physicians who assigned gender scientifically based,
Or so they claimed, on diverse
Characteristics. Just like language is vulnerable.
In fact, they felt entitled
To manipulate sexual identity. Transgender
Would not be permitted. The fetus

Was a poltical victim. Its fetal
Nature denied any science based
Authenticity. Words like transgender,
Philosophies such as diversity
Would not be entitled
To exist. Thus we are vulnerable

To the designs of the pseudo science-based ideologues. Vulnerable
As the entitlements. As the fetus,
Male, female, transgender—the very concept of diversity.


Joan Colby has published widely in journals such as Poetry, Atlanta Review, South Dakota Review, The Spoon River Poetry Review, New York Quarterly, the new renaissance, Grand Street, Epoch, and Prairie Schooner. Awards include two Illinois Arts Council Literary Awards, Rhino Poetry Award, the new renaissance Award for Poetry, and an Illinois Arts Council Fellowship in Literature. She is the editor of Illinois Racing News, and lives on a small horse farm in Northern Illinois. She has published 11 books including The Lonely Hearts Killers and How the Sky Begins to Fall (Spoon River Press), The Atrocity Book (Lynx House Press), Dead Horses and Selected Poems (FutureCycle Press), and Properties of Matter (Aldrich Press). Colby is also an associate editor of Kentucky Review and FutureCycle Press.

SESTINA IN BROWN

by T R Poulson

UPS workers react at the scene where a gunman shot and killed multiple people including himself at a UPS facility in San Francisco, California on June 14, 2017. Several people were shot on Wednesday at a San Francisco warehouse and customer service facility operated by global parcel delivery service UPS, authorities and the company said. UPS spokeswoman Natalie Godwin told AFP the incident involved four workers at the sprawling facility, which employs 850 people. Photo credit: JOSH EDELSON/AFP/Getty Images

The Warriors were on fire
we said: those crisp plays and passes
around the curved black line, the ball and net’s
dance, again and again, those hands
lifted like a lover’s wave. The players
taunted and shoved and said they were joking.

Game four was a joke.
Overseas, nobody laughed as the fire
climbed higher, higher, disrupting play
in bedrooms and out. Things curved and passed
and fell through smoke and flames. Hands
dropped a blanket-wrapped baby through the net

of smoke, as below there were no nets
to catch him (this was not a joke).
The baby fell, and different hands,
sure as Steph Curry’s, took him from fire
to something unknown, a no-look pass,
from love to a chance to make plays

on dark courts like the one where we played
off Arlington Street, Friday nights, the net
of work behind us as the moon made its pass
above us, until dawn loomed, and our jokes
grew strange.  Here, my memory’s fire
smolders.  Years pass, and still underhanded

bosses rule us, who judge and hand
out warning letters, or play
with our numbers, even try to fire
us, though our union’s safety net
saves us.  It was only a joke,
the bantering words that slanted and passed

among us, about a coworker who could pass
for a molester in a movie.  We pictured his hands
with a gun.  It was only a joke.
My buddy used to pretend, to play
the creepy coworker, his friendship a net:
“When he brings in a Glock, he won’t open fire

on me, and I’ll hand him a list.”  Names passed
between us:  the spitfire loader, the sorter with the net
stockings at home, the player of wives.  A joke.  A joke!

T R Poulson is a UPS driver out of the Menlo Park, California, center.  She attends community classes at Stanford, and her work has appeared previously in TheNewVerse.News, as well as in Verdad, Main Channel Voices, Alehouse, Trajectory, Wildcat Review, The Meadow, The Raintown Review, J Journal, and Verdad.