FINAL EXAM WEEK AT NC STATE

by Jerry Krajnak

Last week, students at North Carolina State University concluding their first week of finals learned of terrible news: two apparent student suicides. “This is heartbreaking,” Chancellor Randy Woodson wrote in a community message Thursday. “And I know there’s little I can say to console the deep hurt or heal the immense grief felt by the family and friends of these young people and others we’ve lost this year. What I can say is that I, along with so many caring members of our community, share in this grief.” Such messages have become familiar on the Raleigh campus this year, where 14 students have died, half of them the result of suicide. —NC Newsline, May 1, 2023. Graphic by Chiara Zarmati for The New York Times.

Two more students killed themselves this week.
That’s seven on campus this year. We watched the news,
wondered if some fool would wander off Hillsborough Street
with an AK-47, start shooting one day.
But the perp we should have feared was here on campus
all along, hiding among the beautyberries,
under dawn redwoods. Academic demands
and social pressures lay in wait to spring
on those he'd already chosen. Our seven this year.
Our two this week. We wonder who is next.
 
Our Pack depleted, we mourn as we lug our stuff
to our Moms’ waiting mini-vans.  As a mower roars
or as we pause before springing off a board
this summer, we will think about the need they all felt
to escape the crushing pressures that shattered their lives.
We’ll memorize 988. Return in August, 
greet friends, view them with new eyes, listen 
to them more closely. Hope they will do the same.

Jerry Krajnak gardens, writes poetry, and worries in his North Carolina cabin. Recent poems appear in Autumn Sky Poetry, Rat’s Ass Review, The New Verse News, The Examined Life, Star 82 Review, and other journals.

[GUANTÁNAMO] DOESN'T WORK

by Ron Riekki

“Guantánamo is probably the number one recruitment tool 

that is used by these Jihadist organizations.” 

—former President Barack Obama 

 

“Don’t tell me it doesn’t work. 

Torture works, 

OK, folks?  Torture— 

Half these guys [say]: ‘Torture doesn’t work.’ 

Believe me, it works. Okay?” 

—former President Donald T. 

 

6,000 people work at Guantánamo. 

Close to 6,666 people work at Guantánamo. 

Roughly 6,666 people work at Guantánamo. 

9 people killed at Guantánamo.  Roughly. 

A cardiac arrest at Guantánamo.  Roughly. 

A death by cancer at Guantánamo.  Roughly. 

 

Seven suicides at Guantánamo.  Roughly. 

Rags in the throats of the suicides.  Yes, rags. 

Rags in the throats of the suicides?  Yes, 

rags in the throats of the suicides. And eyes? (See

Rage Against the Machine’s “Vietnow” throat quote:

cages.) Go Geronimo with this Guantánamonow.

 

Called Gitmo, if you twist the language, if you 

distort the language, if you torture the language, 

then it becomes GTMO.  Git, an unpleasant 

or contemptible person.  “That mean ol’ git.” 

Don’t call him that.  What should I call them? 

You will call them ‘detainees;'

 

you will not call them prisoners. 

They will call out for their mothers, call 

out for their grandmothers, call out for their ancestors. 

You will not call them children; 

You will call them ‘juvenile enemy 

combatants.’  They will not be allowed 

 

to call home.  On the outside, it’s supposed 

to say HONOR BOUND, but it looked like 

HORROR BOUND the first time I saw it. 

We spend 5.6 billion dollars on Guantánamo.  

And 5.6 billion less synapses after 

chronic traumatic encephalopathy. 

 

Difficult to count after traumatic brain injury. 

6,000.  666.  9.  3.  1.  0.  0?  Mouthlike, but 

you don’t call out for your mother when you’re dead. 

You don’t call out for your ancestors 

with a rag in your throat.  Rage.  Honor, 

beating, hooding, waterboarding, bound. 

Ron Riekki co-edited Undocumented: Great Lakes Poets Laureate on Social Justice (Michigan State University Press).