NO GUNS LEFT BEHIND

by Mickey J. Corrigan

Where are the parents
their kids running wild
down dark city streets
shooting each other
with fireworks, handguns
fighting and flocking
in one huge roiling mass
of raging hormonal insanity
preteens to twenty-somethings
alerted online, on phones
to create havoc together
a youth wilding
a teen takeover
flash crowds run amok
in Orlando, DC, Pensacola
a fatality on the 4th
ten kids shot and 
where are the parents
now that their children
are hospitalized
or dead?

Mickey J. Corrigan writes about death. A lot. It's kind of her thing. Poetry chapbooks include Days' End (Main Street Rag) which takes place in a fictional Florida suicide parlor, and Final Arrangements, a series of poems about burial practices around the world (Prolific Press). No Guns Left Behind (Cyberwit) shares a chronology of school shootings in poetic form. Mickey lives in the Sunshine State, where crime and bad deaths abound. Her latest novel is Lazy Palms (Cyberwit, 2026) about an experimental euthanasia trailer park.

SENATOBIA, JUNE 2026

by Eric Goldfarb

SENATOBIA, Miss.—People scattered in a Walmart parking lot on [last] Tuesday as law enforcement officers, who were wearing gas masks and lined up under the store’s grocery-side entrance, unleashed tear gas on the crowd that had gathered to protest the police killing of 1-year-old Kohen Wiley [pictured above]. Two days earlier on June 14, the young Black child died after a Senatobia police officer fired into a moving car, killing him and injuring the driver. Officers, who had been responding to a call alleging that someone had tried to steal a box of diapers, claimed that the car was driving toward the officer when he fired—a claim that some witnesses have disputed. —Mississippi Free Press, June 17, 2026

The report said: one box of diapers.

The report said: they saw the child first.

The report did not say what diapers cost,

only who was made to pay.

Eric Goldfarb writes poems and essays about the quiet reinventions that shape a life. His work appears or is forthcoming in ONE ART, Hippocampus Magazine, Third Wednesday, Midsummer Dream House, Panorama, and elsewhere. After decades in technology and private equity, he returned to the page. He lives with his wife in Atlanta.

BITS AND PIECES

by Lynn White

They waited patiently
standing in line
hunger made them quiet
un-childlike
too quiet for children
standing in line.

Who knew what they’d be
when they grew up
those children
tinker, tailor, soldier, spy
on our side or theirs
whoever the us and them are.

Now we know for certain that 
they’ll be none of those things
now they’re scattered 
in bits and pieces
bombed to bits
just in case.

Futures laid to rest
in bits and pieces
just in case.

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.

SPINNING THE CYLINDER

by Akua Lezli Hope

Sonya Massey (above) ducked and apologized to an Illinois sheriff’s deputy seconds before he shot the Black woman three times in her home, with one fatal blow to the head, as seen in body camera video released Monday. An Illinois grand jury indicted former Sangamon County Sheriff’s Deputy Sean Grayson, 30, who is white, last week. He has pleaded not guilty to charges of first-degree murder, aggravated battery with a firearm and official misconduct. —AP, July 23, 2024

Because I am disabled, black and female in an under-resourced part of the world
Because I have called for help in the past and got harm
Because in a recent need for assistance I wept to 911 confessing my fear
Because Sonya Massey said on meeting the cop at her front door, “Don’t Hurt Me”
Because I saw her neat yard, glimpsed flowers, the vacuum cleaner in her kitchen, her robe over t-shirt and pj pants, her slippers, her neatly wrapped head
Because someone prowled around her white house, like mine, and cops found 
a black SUV with busted out windows next door
Because she was right to call and wronged
Because I saw her shot to death in her kitchen after apologizing, “I’m Sorry” on PBS
Because I couldn’t weep again and again and again but I haven’t slept for days
Because some of you will see this as anomalous, I testify that it is not
Because I am not dead from my bad encounters, only wounded and afraid 
Because my friends rescued me 
Because I live in a small town and don’t know how those chosen to police were chosen
Because there were all these red flags
Because, for those like me, asking for help is playing Russian Roulette
Because I never know if there’s a bullet in the chamber and if it’s pointed at my head


Akua Lezli Hope is a creator and wisdom seeker who uses sound, words, fiber, glass, metal, and wire to create poems, patterns, stories, music, sculpture, and peace. A paraplegic, third-generation New Yorker, her honors include the NEA, two NYFAs, NYSCA, SFPA, Elgin, & Best of the Net, Rhysling & Pushcart Prize nominations. Editor of NOMBONO, the first BIPOC speculative poetry anthology, she seeks work for a new anthology of disability themed speculative poetry at disabilitypoetics.com.

PLEASE CHOOSE

by Donald Sellitti

Nina Chanel Abney, “Hobson’s Choice” (2017), acrylic and spray paint on canvas, 84 1/4 x 120 3/16 x 1 15/16 inches (image via Hyperallergic)

Please choose which dead to mourn. Now,
with your sorrow and your anger still as
raw as the shoveled earth above them. Please choose.

The children in their shorts and Messi jerseys
dead beneath the mothers clothed head to toe
in garments turned to shrouds, or

the children lying bloody in their soccer shirts
shot point blank with mothers forced to watch.
Mourn either one, not both. Please choose.

Scream loudly in my ear until I hear
you. It will never make me feel your pain, but
I might finally come to understand. 

I will not judge you for the choice you make, 
but you have no other choice but choosing.
Please choose which dead you will avenge.
Please choose.

Donald Sellitti honed his writing skills as a scientist/educator at a Federal medical school in Bethesda, MD before turning to poetry following his retirement. Numerous publications in journals with titles such as Cancer Research and Oncology Letters have been followed by publications in journals with titles like The Alchemy Spoon, Better than Starbucks, and Rat’s Ass Review, which nominated him for a Pushcart Prize in 2022.

UNDER INVESTIGATION BY THE DOJ, PHOENIX POLICE DEPARTMENT REVISES USE OF FORCE POLICY

by Susan Vespoli

             “I think god has another plan for my life.” —Adam Vespoli, weeks before he was shot

City of Phoenix

solicits public input

on “Use of Force” policy.

        Officer Donnell Lindo, the cop who shot

               my son is gone.     

Core Principles: Goal 

of every encounter is

to resolve without force.

       Turned in his gun,

               his holster, badge.  

Employees shall make 

every effort to preserve 

sanctity of human life.

      was found by Critical

                Incident Review Board to be in the wrong.   

                Referred for discipline.

Employees shall respect, 

uphold value, rights, liberty,

dignity of all

      Resigned before he was fired.

                (Didn’t resign before he fired the gun.)  

persons at all times.

Always use de-escalation

tactics. Shall be held

      The cop who shot   my son 

                is gone.

accountable for

violating policy. 

Discharge of firearm. 

      Where’d he run?

“He no longer works for the department.” 

    —Clerk at Phoenix Police Public Records

Turned in his badge,

his bullets, gun.

Shooting person close 

range   in the head    is Deadly 

Force       always last resort.

My son is gone.

Author’s note: Words in italics are “found poem” from mail conversation with Police Records and "Use of Force" Proposal.

Susan Vespoli writes from Phoenix, Arizona where she continues to write toward finding some sort of justice for her son, Adam Vespoli, who was shot and killed by police on March 12, 2022.

Editor's Note: The New Verse News previously published five of long-time contributor Susan Vespoli's poems about the killing of her son by police:  "Before I Knew Adam Had Died" and "My Ex-Husband Calls To Tell Me Our Son Has Been Shot By Police," "Police Violence in Reverse," "Dear 2022," and “I Am Finally Handed the Critical Incident Review Board Report.”

CROSSING THE DNIEPER

by W. Luther Jett

The small motor boat carrying Tetiana Svitlova and her husband, Vladyslav Svitlov, was hit by gunfire as the couple crossed the Dnieper River on Sunday. (Heidi Levine for The Washington Post, December 6, 2022)

For Tetiana Svitlova, 75, who was shot by a sniper while crossing the Dnieper from Russian-occupied territory to liberated Kherson.

There is snow on the boat now

where the woman fell

while crossing the river two hours

ago—where the woman

in that moment reached out for

her husband—two

hours ago mid-river the woman

fell—snow covers

the boat—the place where she fell

crossing the grey river—

she was shot—have we mentioned?—

that is why she fell—

crossing the river now is dangerous—

there is snow now

to cover the place she—the woman—

bled out crossing

the river—on her way to safety

W. Luther Jett is a native of Montgomery County, Maryland and a retired special educator. His poetry has been published in numerous journals as well as several anthologies. He is the author of five poetry chapbooks: Not Quite: Poems Written in Search of My Father (Finishing Line Press, 2015), Our Situation (Prolific Press, 2018), Everyone Disappears (Finishing Line Press, 2020), Little Wars (Kelsay Books, 2021), and Watchman, What of the Night? (CW Books, 2022).

SCENES FROM BUCHA: EARLY SPRING, 2022

by Tom Cartelli

Volunteer cemetery workers loaded a large truck with 65 bodies found in April in Bucha. Credit Daniel Berehulak for The New York Times photo accompanying “Three Women of Bucha: Their Deaths and Lives,” by Carlotta Gall and Oleksandr Chubko, October 15, 2022.

“I buried her a bit in the night.

There was so much shelling I did not

know what else to do,” says the elderly

mother of Tetiana Pomazanko, who

lies slumped, head out of frame, torso

covered in plastic, knees bent, thin legs raised

in the photograph.  Child-like at 56, her

“woolen socks and galoshes poked out

beneath the boards,” beside the path where

she had stood thinking the tanks rolling

up her street were “ours” not theirs.

 

 “On Sunday afternoon, on a road leading west

out of Bucha, a man lay dead on his back,

his green bicycle toppled beside him.

Shot through the face, he bore a large hole

in the back of his skull,” the report states.

 

These dead are awkwardly posed, unready

for the defining shot, all that connects

to familiar sights and sounds asymmetric

to the cruel force that pounds them.

A man torn from life by shots from a tank,

twisted on the ground in a worn winter coat.

A woman serially raped and left for dead,

Naked on a basement floor, wrapped in fur.

 

Bodies of old women and men left to starve

in a nursing home, others lying face down,

hands bound, in courtyards and backyards,

scorched to death in burnt-out cars,

left to rot on pock-marked roads, or tumbled

into a ditch. “In one corner, two pairs of shoes

and an arm protruded from a thin layer of dirt,

in another, a hand stuck out,” the report says.

 

Notes: Drawn from reporting of Carlotta Gall, Andrew E. Kramer & Ivor Prickett in The New York Times, April 3, 2022, and additional reporting by Carlotta Gall & photographer Daniel Berehulak in “Bucha’s Month of Terror,” The New York Times, April 11, 2022, this poem was edited, reassembled, and elaborated on by Tom Cartelli. On October 15, 2022, an article in The New York Times identified Oksana Sulyma as the woman imprisoned in a potato cellar, raped, shot in the head, and found wearing only a fur coat.

Tom Cartelli is a theater scholar and emeritus professor of literature and global film studies. He is the author most recently of an essay on three recorded performances of New York's Wooster Group and of two politically driven poems in Politics/Letters. He lives in retirement in Western New Jersey (USA), where he spends his time reading, writing, walking, and altogether too immersed in the news of the day.

POLICE VIOLENCE IN REVERSE

a gigan

by Susan Vespoli 

Three bullets pop from the back of my son’s head

shiny, bloodless, sailing up the barrel of a gun

that tucks itself into the holster at the hip

of a 25-year-old policeman who still dreams

of the person he shot 11 months earlier,

still jolts awake screaming,      I’m sorry!

My son, no longer dead, returns to the bus

and falls asleep, traveling to the previous morning          

at 6:00 a.m., where he and his unhoused comrades

 

slumber in the underpass tunnel by the freeway.

No thoughts of bullets enter his head. Cops who arrive

at daybreak look around, say, I’m sorry, do not tackle them, snicker,

arrest them for “sleeping in a public place.” Instead, they pass out blankets,

coffee, flyers for shelters; see the wheelchair, the crutches, the backpacks,

people shivering from the cold, not fear of the badge, the taunt, the violent

ego of those hired by taxpayers to be protectors, peacekeepers.

Susan Vespoli writes from Phoenix, AZ where she believes in the power of writing to heal. Before her son was killed in March 2022, she told him about the poems she wrote about him and addiction in their family. He was quiet and then turned to her and said, "If the poems can help others, then good."

Editor's Note: The New Verse News previously published two of long-time contributor Susan Vespoli's poems about the killing of her son by police: "Before I Knew Adam Had Died" and "My Ex-Husband Calls To Tell Me Our Son Has Been Shot By Police."

HAVE YOU ANY CLUES?

by Indran Amirthanayagam

The Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), the nation’s largest Muslim civil rights and advocacy organization, today responded to the murder of another Albuquerque Muslim by a serial shooter who has allegedly been targeting Muslims for nine months by raising its reward for information leading to the arrest and conviction of those responsible to $10,000. Photo: People spread dirt over Aftab Hussein's grave at Fairview Memorial Park in Albuquerque, New Mexico, on Aug. 5, 2022. (The Albuquerque Journal via AP)

Four Muslim men in New Mexico—a grocer,

a busser, a city planner, and Friday night 

another, a worker in a refugee center—

 

have been shot dead, three over the last

week, serial killer roaming, targeting 

brown people who worship Allah, 

 

the news not breaking yet in all 

the feeds of the nation but spilling 

digitally here; and I am asking you 

 

to report suspicious behavior where 

you live. Be your brother's and sister's 

keeper, your brown and Muslim 

 

brother’s,  your brown and Muslim 

sister’s. Take care of your back,

their backs. Work with the police. 

 

Provide any leads. Find 

the killer. It takes a village. 

It takes a country.

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.

SHIREEN ABU AKLEH (IN MEMORIAM)

by Indran Amirthanayagam

The Palestinian Authority on Thursday declined a request to let Israeli officials examine the bullet that killed Shireen Abu Akleh, a prominent reporter for Al Jazeera who was killed in the occupied West Bank during an Israeli raid. Palestinian officials and witnesses accused Israeli soldiers of killing Ms. Abu Akleh, dismissing Israeli claims that the journalist may have been hit by Palestinian fire during a shootout in Jenin, a city in the northern West Bank. —The New York Times, May 12, 2022. Photo: The day after she was killed, Palestinian artists were already at work painting a mural of Shireen Abu Akleh in Jenin, a city in the northern West Bank. Credit: Mohammed Saber/EPA, via Shutterstock via The New York Times)

Who killed Shireen Abu Akleh? Who fired the bullet

into her head? Who raided the neighborhood? Who

has the right to bear arms? Who has the right

to desecrate the dead? Who is crying for justice

where justice has not been served, not for

Rachel Corrie, who stood before a bulldozer. Not

for Shireen who wrote of people how they live

and cook, wash and teach, how they live and die

in an occupied land as second class subjects. Meanwhile

the murderer walks. Meanwhile the struggle continues

between lord and subject. And the girl who loved holding

her bottle before the mirror as a microphone saying

one day I will grow to be Shireen Abu Akleh: what

shall we tell her now? Where can she bury her tears?

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.

BLACK TRAFFIC, STOP

by Rémy Dambron

The police in Grand Rapids, Mich., released videos on Wednesday showing a white officer fatally shooting Patrick Lyoya (pictured above), a 26-year-old Black man, after a struggle during a traffic stop last week. The officer, who has not been named, was lying on the back of Mr. Lyoya before he appeared to shoot him in the head. In the seconds before the shooting, Mr. Lyoya and the officer wrestled on the ground and seemed to be fighting for control of the officer’s Taser. —The New York Times, April 13, 2022

at first 

an ordinary traffic 

stop, routine

suspect 

you

stay in the car 

get back in the car

do you have a license 

your plates don’t match

do you speak english 

show me your license 

i said your plates don’t match

stay in the car

no stop

you can’t stand there

hey you can’t stand there

stand here no 

wait STOP

grabbing him 

restraining him

throwing him to the ground

with the force of the law

immunity qualified

we’ve seen this before 

too many times before

released body cam footage shows

cop shoots black man

don’t watch it

hurts 

(body camera shuts off)

he shoots 

he shot him

the cop shot the black man

(body camera turns on)

paramedics can’t revive him

because the cop 

he shot him

he shot him dead 

for what 

why

forgive me 

for being repetitive 

but another man with a badge 

shows his bad intentions and 

oh, did I mention?

*he shot him in the head

they called it a struggle

a fight for control over the taser

cop drawing the weapon first

ready to electrocute 

the man he would instead 

just shoot 

but no charges filed

the investigation is ongoing

ongoing, yes

forgive me 

for being repetitive but 

another man with a badge shows his bad intentions 

and oh, did I mention?

*he shot him in the head

his community going on 

carrying his cry for help

to the city steps in protest

to say to their reps 

please 

enough 

stop letting them shoot us

for gods sake 

jesus 

forgive me 

for being repetitive 

but another man 

with a badge 

shows his bad 

intentions and 

oh, did I mention?

*he shot him in the fucking head

Rémy Dambron is a former English teacher now Portland-based poet whose writing focuses on denouncing political corruption and advocating for social/environmental justice. With the help of his chief editor and loving wife, his works have appeared in What Rough Beast, Poets Reading the News, Writers Resist, Words & Whispers, Spillwords, Robot Butt, and The New Verse News. 

BEFORE I KNEW ADAM HAD DIED

by Susan Vespoli

a hummingbird flittered on the other side of the glass 

patio door    a feathered sprite that stayed   stared

       at me     hovered like an airborne messenger     stayed 

       until I rose to face it      look into its seed-bead eyes

watch its wings thrum      to keep body aloft      its face

breathing in mine      until it released me       lifted off

       toward the pot of geraniums      breathed in billowy

       red petals      sipped nectar      through its dart-sharp beak

darted around the yard    like a small soft helicopter

and then      whoosh     disappeared over the fence. I didn’t know

       my son had already disappeared    from this human life

       or that I’d google to find a hummer is a symbol for freedom

and “may be a sign that a loved one has successfully made it

(like the hummingbird) to the other side   and is doing just fine.”

Editor's Note: Susan Vespoli’s son Adam, shot and killed by police last week, appeared in many of her poems, including "Chicken" and "Alex's Teeth" (Alex = code name for Adam) in The New Verse News.

Susan Vespoli writes from Phoenix, Arizona where the opioid epidemic is still alive and well. 

AFTERIMAGE

by Cathleen Cohen

Portrait of Kaylin Johnson (KJ) painted by Cathleen Cohen for the Johnson family as part of the Soul Shots Project the mission of which is to bring attention to and memorialize the lives lost and tragically altered due to gun violence. KJ was shot and killed in Philadelphia in July 2021.

Painting KJ’s portrait, I peer

at an image of this beautiful boy, shot

in his parked car, waiting

 

to ferry friends to soccer practice.

His mother sends photos that capture

his smile, his jaunty shoulders.

 

I can tell he was quick

with jokes, sparking others.

His mother says he’d jump 

to carry heavy bags 

for older neighbors,

even strangers.

 

The boy who shot him

was a stranger.

Afterimage is illusion.

The brain persists in seeing

what’s removed.

 

Sometimes color memory

is repressed,

sometimes brighter.

 

I cry when I take up the brush.

What about skin tone?

Reference photos lack 

saturation

and I never met him.

Or background?

 

Brick red for urban houses?

Cobalt for sky—something

hopeful?

Cathleen Cohen was the 2019 Poet Laureate of Montgomery County, PA. A poet, painter and teacher, she created the We the Poets program for children. Her poems appear in journals such as Apiary, Baltimore Review, East Coast Ink, North of Oxford, One Art Journal, Passager, Philadelphia Stories, Poetica, River Heron Review, and Rogue Agent. She authored Camera Obscura (Moonstone Press), Etching the Ghost (Atmosphere Press) and Sparks and Disperses (Cornerstone Press). Her artwork is on view at Cerulean Arts Gallery.

IT'S THE QUICK PRICKS

by Tricia Knoll

You lament we’ve missed so much

theater, solstice estivals, state fair curly fries,

Aunt Moo’s 75th birthday at the river

 

but I’m thinking of what I don’t miss

    yellow fever       polio       lockjaw

          flu         hepatitis       diphtheria 

 

because I learned a thing or two

     from   mumps     measles    chicken pox

                whooping cough

 

see I’m old enough to have had those

      but not the firsts because I got the shot

 

and I’m old enough to have had

       my two COVID quick pricks

 

so I don’t miss holding my new grandson

       on the way, seeing our plays unfold

       on a stage with open curtains. 

       Amen and thank you.  

Tricia Knoll just got her second COVID shot. She took the "quick pricks" from Naomi Shihab Nye's poem "Dear Vaccine." Knoll's new chapbook Checkered Mates is available from Kelsay Books and Amazon.

HAIKU

Photo credit: REUTERS/Dado Ruvic/Illustration via The Jakarta Post.

Sari Grandstaff is a high school librarian in the Mid-Hudson Valley/Catskill Mountains of New York State. Her work has appeared in many places including Chronogram, Eastern Structures, and The New Verse News. Being born on Christmas Day she still has visions of sugar plums dancing in her head. 

THE TROUBLE WITH YESTERDAY IS THAT IT'S NOT TODAY EVEN IF IT PLAGIARIZES YESTERDAY

by Dianna  Mackinnon Henning


Palestinian protesters near the Gaza-Israel border. YnetNews

it won’t be the same. The ironic bay window tires
revealing the picturesque—several fruit trees, aspen and
a roly-poly hillside marred with wildflowers. Shades are
more than pulled blinds. All those Palestinians shot
down. Windows break because they’re glass. Flesh is
not iron. It never will be nor does it aspire such. A young
boy’s boomerang is no weapon. They’ll kill him anyway.
Yesterday’s headlines announced hope. The trouble with
hope is that it shifts positions. Yoga doesn’t mean the body
bows like a field of wildflowers in a bilingual downpour.

Dianna Mackinnon Henning holds an MFA in Writing ’89 from Vermont College of Fine Arts. Her work has appeared in The Moth, Naugatuck River Review, Lullwater Review, The Red Rock Review, The Kentucky Review, The Good Works Review, The Main Street Rag, California Quarterly, Poetry International, Fugue, 22 Wagons, South Dakota Review, Trag, Hawai’i Pacific Review, and The Seattle Review. A three-time Pushcart nominee, Henning has taught poetry through California Poets in the Schools. The William James Association’s Prison Arts Program  gave her the opportunity to teach poetry at Folsom and other CA prisons. Henning’s third poetry chapbook Cathedral of the Hand was published in 2016 byFinishing Line 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.

CORVIDS

by Jonathan Travelstead

Image source: WebEcoist

Want to catch an illegal alien? Study the crow,
its shiny things. Foil hat. Mirrors, chewing gum wrappers
wadded in nests.

We haven't been family for three hundred million years.
Their minds are closer to the lizard brain
where we parted ways, descending different trees.

Yet watch them make tools from straws they use,
solving riddles which require up to eight steps of critical thinking
to deftly pincer out the strip of raw beef.

Crafty. Pistachio, floating in a glass. I watched a crow fly
between an alley and a picnic table, plinking pebbles
and small stones until enough water

displaced the nut to within reach of its beak.
They're smarter than you. We haven't evolved in the right direction
to distinguish their motivations.

Pepper them with shot, and they remember, tell the next
generation about the change in route and elevation.
Screen a dome over the tomatoes walled within your garden

and a few tunnel the fence, but first send scouts
proficient in the killdeer's portrayal of a broken wing
along your flank, divert you while a murder

marches on the front gate. They'll rob you blind. In Arizona,
I hear blackberry pies vanish from windows.
Sheets hanging on the line disappear.

Canadian fishermen drop lines into holes
rough-cut in ice, later report their lines drawn up in a spaghetti tangle
of nylon, scales, and black feathers on the red snow.

Crow, rook, blackbird, raven- call them what you want.
Hell, my Chevy broke down near Roswell and one completed
my solenoid's broken circuit with a flat-head,

then wouldn't take a dime! Each can do the job of ten men.
They don't think like we do.

They don't need much.

Jonathan Travelstead served in the Air Force National Guard for six years as a firefighter and currently works as a full-time firefighter for the city of Murphysboro. Having finished his MFA at Southern Illinois University of Carbondale, he now works on an old dirt-bike he hopes will one day get him to the salt flats of Bolivia. He has published work in The Iowa Review and on Poetrydaily.com among others, and his first collection How We Bury Our Dead by Cobalt/Thumbnail Press is forthcoming in February, 2015.