ELEVEN HOMICIDES, GILGO BEACH, SUFFOLK COUNTY, NY

by LindaAnn LoSchiavo

 

Author's Note: Suffolk County, New York law enforcement sabotaged and delayed investigating the deaths of eleven corpses found along Gilgo Beach for years until their corrupt Police Chief James Burker was arrested in connection with a different case and imprisoned along with Thomas Spota, District Attorney, and Christopher McPartland, Assistant District Attorney. All three were convicted of witness tampering, obstruction of justice, and conspiracy charges. Only then did the Gilgo Beach murder investigation proceed. On Wednesday, June 17th, 2026 the killer was sentenced.

 

 

 

 

New Yorker and award-winner LindaAnn LoSchiavo is a member of British Fantasy Society,  HWA, SFPA, and The Dramatists Guild. Find out more about her on Substack @GreenwichVillagePoet .

WHAT WE WANT TO HEAR

by Suzette Bishop

A former Border Patrol agent who confessed to killing four sex workers in 2018 was convicted Wednesday of capital murder, after jurors heard recordings of him telling investigators he was trying to "clean up the streets" of his South Texas hometown. —NPR, December 7, 2022

God loves you, she tells him

When he says he wants to kill himself,

And he shoots her

Along I-35,

The road I’ve taken

Countless times out of Laredo.

The woman who escapes his truck

And Border Patrol-issued gun

Leaves him grasping her shirt

At the gas station

Around the corner from me.

He lives in a nearby subdivision

In the newer, shinier part of town

Built on ranch land belonging to a Mexican family

When this was Mexico,

In litigation for years, sold for almost nothing.

She coaxes him to take her to get cigarettes

When the realization he’s the one who killed the others

Pricks her like cactus. 

San Bernardo where he picked up

Prostitutes is further south

Off I-35.

You’ll find rundown motels,

Mid-century nostalgia,

A few restaurants

Including at least one that served both food

And, unbeknownst to us, women,

Another where the waiter

Would wait until my husband went to the restroom

To meet my eyes,

Nod knowingly, even walked over once

To tell me I’m pretty,

Running after us one evening in the parking lot

With some special smoothie

He made just for me.

He was gone the next time we went there.

Spilling out of Olive Garden

At the mall across the highway

After a work luncheon,

A woman begged us for money.

I gave her my styrofoam of leftovers,

But I knew it wasn’t enough,

No shade offered from the palm trees

Cordoning off our oasis from

Heroin alley,

This road,

Bait,

This moment of telling her,

You could be my wife, now,

Live in this house she left,

Following the underpasses

And drainage ditches.

Flooring it

To a nicer road built on stolen desert.

When the woman escapes,

He drives home, arms the place,

Guns and ammo laid out on the kitchen island’s granite

And speeds out onto the highway again,

The section where you can hear teens

Drag race.

He catches two more victims

Before he’s caught,

Throwing their bodies like trash

Along the highway.

He said it was to clean up the streets.

A student wrote about one victim, a relative,

Addicted, her children were raised by her mother,

Rehab hadn’t worked,

But they still loved her,

Told the children she loved them

And would get better,

Couldn’t believe how she’d died,

Left alone in buzzing scrub brush.

On Sundays, teenagers

show off their muscle cars

Along San Bernardo,

Police having to direct traffic,

Kids calling to each other out the windows,

Sometimes saying everything we want to hear,

Probably some of these women, once.

Suzette Bishop has published three poetry books and two chapbooks, including her most recent chapbook, Jaguar’s Book of the Dead. Her poems have appeared in many journals and anthologies. She lives with her husband and two cats. 

THE PAINTED FACES

by Vidya Panicker

It was business as usual at brothel 59 in Delhi's GB Road, which houses more than 4,000 sex workers. What was unusual on the night of June 23 was the deliberate gait of Sameer Tyagi, a regular client of this brothel. Sameer appeared a bit jaded, busy on the phone, scanning the faces of about 20 odd garishly painted faces of women as they waited around for the next deal. It was 10pm, humid and a Bollywood number was playing loudly. —Anasuya Basu, Daily O, July 3, 2015; Image: Oil painting of a prostitute from Lahore's Red Light District, by Iqbal Hussain. Source: The Express Tribune (Pakistan) Blogs.

Here, and there,
the women behind the curtains
do not strip for you.

Through the folds of their
saree, and the pinched
fabric of their blouse
you occasionally catch a glimpse
of a sagging breast
or a tummy with overlapping stretch marks.

Foreplay:
you ask the one you choose.

She smirks at you
with her betel red lips
which she wipes with her palm,
pinches out two condoms from a tray,
lifts her saree and skirt up in a swift motion
and spread her tired legs on you.

Your desperate self is ready
needing no foreplay, apparently.
You lay back, relax
imagine the shudders
are a jolly lorry ride to Ladakh
or something better
while she works on you.

In about two minutes, or less
you zip up your pants
and walk out of the door.
Someone else quickly moves in
for his turn.

The painted face smirks again.

There is a daily quota;
a number signified
by the missing condoms on the tray
and later, she would run
like the rest of them—

Run home
to a sleeping child or a drunk husband
or a pimp who smacks his lips
but more often,
just to pee, and to cry out loud when the warm salty
liquid touches the bruises
that are never left to heal.


Based in the God's own country of Kerala, Vidya Panicker’s poems have appeared in The Feminist Review, So to Speak, Shot Glass Journal, One sentence Poetry, Three Line poetry, Aberration Labyrinth, Bangalore Review, and 4and20 Poetry.