ALL PARENTS WANT THEIR KIDS' DREAMS TO COME TRUE

by Tamara Kreutz

Foto Prensa Libre, July 17, 2022: Elmer Vargas

I.

Last Sunday at breakfast in San Martín, 

a Guatemalan bakery chain, my husband and I 

sipped our coffee and tea, as our three children 

raced up and down the indoor jungle gym.

While watching them, we thumbed through the paper. 

This story’s fucking awful, my husband said. 

The body of Juan Wilmer Tulul Tepaz, 

a fourteen-year-old Guatemalan boy who died (trapped 

in an abandoned truck in summer San Antonio heat)

was returned home to a village outside Sololá. 

The story showed pictures of his parents. The father’s 

hand covered weeping eyes as he sank into himself—

back bowed, arms pressing a crease in his middle.

The mother’s brow was squeezed into the shape

of a moth’s wings spread across her forehead.

She wore a purple huipil and a black bandana, 

and her hand caressed her son’s casket—the tips 

of her manicured fingers pressing into the wood, 

her thumb stroking the edge as she would her son’s cheek.

II.

My family just moved to Guatemala

to give our kids the life America 

couldn’t. Its dream had chewed us up, leaving the gnawed 

gristle of debt and burnout—the cost of gas

and rent and medical care. But in Guatemala, 

opportunity would unfold like a rug 

before our children’s feet—piano, dance, 

and horseback riding lessons—because the dollar

goes so much further here. In Guatemala,

I can pay someone to clean my house and watch my kids,

and if we’re sick and need labs, I won’t worry

the bills will hollow out our savings account. 

Our first day here, my toddler son locked himself 

into a second-story bedroom with an open 

window. He screamed for fifteen minutes, then went silent. 

I panicked, pounded the door, then raced out the house

and up and down the street, asking everyone 

I saw if they had tools to pick a lock—

until someone called the fire department.

Back in the house, I kicked the door, I paced, doubled

over, hunching in circles around the family room,

crying, I just want my baby back, now.

When the locksmith came with wires and screwdrivers

to take the doorknob off, and I finally burst through

to find my son sound asleep in bed, I pulled

his little body to my chest. He woke,

startled, but nestled his silky head under my chin,

and I felt his heart beat against mine. In the nine years 

I’ve been a mother, this was the first time

I couldn’t reach my child who needed me.

III.

I keep thinking about how I felt, locked away

from my son, wondering if he was hurt or even—

(I can’t bring myself to write it, I’ll leave the word 

unsaid). And I keep thinking about Juan Wilmer— 

the ten thousand dollars his parents paid 

the coyote for safe transport, his dream 

of education, the pictures of him alive 

and smiling placed on the family altar.

I keep thinking about his mother’s hand

that clutched his casket, her fingers spreading 

over its edge—exactly how my hand

had clutched the arm of my live and dreaming child.

Tamara Kreutz is an English Language Arts teacher and a poet who resides in Antigua, Guatemala. She began writing poetry early in the pandemic, and through poetry, she found order, peace, and joy in a turbulent, uncertain time.

IN DREAMS, DEATH

by Dick Altman

The death toll of migrants who died after they were abandoned in the back of a tractor-trailer that was discovered Monday in San Antonio rose to 53 on Wednesday… —CBS News, June 29, 2022

 

The land of the free...

 

I write this today – in America –

thanks to grandparents who heard

in heart and spirit that phrase echo

in Russian – Yiddish – perhaps

even German – Echo as they escaped

the poverty and oppression of Eastern

Europe in the 1900s – crossed mostly

by foot the continent – to land

at the magic portal of Ellis Island –

opening a door to life that until

this moment existed alone in letter

and rumor and what the mind

conjured as America

 

The land of the free... 

 

From lowlands – highlands – jungles

and shores they came two days ago –

walking – struggling – like my forebears –

this time from Mexico and South America –

leaving mothers and fathers – leaving birth’s

land and language – leaving with visions

that America would somehow – as it had

in the past – open its arms – offer – as it

had in the past – another chance at life –

Except the door – which had for

decades swung so freely – creaked on

its hinges –budging barely an inch

 

The land of the free... 

 

How many times did the refrain echo

in the minds of the sojourners – who –

no longer on foot – stood packed

in an airless – overheated subway

car of a semi-trailer – sworn to open

America’s locked heart – How many times

before the refrain turned from dream into

breathless prayer – How many times –

as one by one – the precious cargo lost

consciousness – calling – screaming

to the heavens – crying out to America’s

indifferent soul

 

The land of the free... 

 

 

Dick Altman writes in the high, thin, magical air of Santa Fe, NM, where, at 7,000 feet, reality and imagination often blur. He is published in Santa Fe Literary Review, American Journal of Poetry, riverSedge, Fredericksburg Literary Review, Foliate Oak, Blue Line, THE Magazine, Humana obscura, The Offbeat, Haunted Waters Press, Split Rock Review, The RavensPerch, Beyond Words, The New Verse News, Sky Island Journal, and others here and abroad.  A poetry winner of Santa Fe New Mexican’s annual literary competition, he has in progress two collections of some 100 published poems. His work has been selected for the first volume of The New Mexico Anthology of Poetry forthcoming from the New Mexico Museum Press.

THE CONCENTRIC CIRCLES OF WAR

by Katherine West 

“A Room of Memory” by Chiharu Shiota (2009): old wooden windows, group exhibition Hundred Stories about Love, 21st Century Museum of Contemporary Art, Kanazawa, Japan

Inside, there's a memory of neighbors on an evening porch, of burning then warming sun, of a half-feral cat leaving freedom for langurous hours of touch, of cold night then the warmth of a shared bed. 

Inside, there's a fire going and moody jazz in the background, an old watercolor of a Ukrainian boy and girl in traditional clothes. They are on their way to market; seen from behind and one side, their bodies are full of purpose. 

Inside, there's the sound of birds outside; sometimes just wings whooshing back and forth, sometimes a little squawk and chatter. Faraway, a songbird. 

Outside, sun is trying to warm the morning. Outside, clouds are burning off; red ants are waking up, appearing at the door of their mound like holy men dressed in the color of life. 

Outside, the first truck rumbles down the gravel road, kicking up its own cloud. Outside, the crack of target practice, to the south, a helicopter.

Outside, the first shell drops on an apartment building already abandoned by its residents who now live in the subway. The first paratrooper touches down. The first tank goes up in flames. 

Outside, the first wildflowers glow like a small sunrise amongst dry, white grass. Outside, the ravens are mating aloft. 

Inside, is poetry from Ukraine. 

You are the train that will pour

burning wine on the skin,

so that it will blaze

madly

(Natalka Bioltserkivets)

Outside, is poetry from Ukraine, a long line of refugees with bundles, like leafcutter ants carrying off the petals of roses.  

Katherine West lives in Southwest New Mexico, near Silver City. She has written three collections of poetry: The Bone Train, Scimitar Dreams, and Riddle, as well as one novel, Lion Tamer. Her poetry has appeared in journals such as Writing in a Woman's Voice, Lalitamba, Bombay Gin, The New Verse News, Tanka Journal, Splash!, Eucalypt, and Southwest Word Fiesta. The New Verse News nominated her poem "And Then the Sky" for a Pushcart Prize in 2019. In addition she has had poetry appear as part of art exhibitions at the Light Art Space gallery in Silver City, New Mexico and at the Windsor Museum in Windsor, Colorado. She is also an artist. 

MOURNING GEORGE FLOYD

by Marilyn Peretti

A boxy white truck with the blue eagle
pulls up to the curb, the postal vehicle
I observe most days.

Today I’m absorbed in tv, at the same time
view the driver through my window—
her pale blue clerk’s shirt, a billed cap,
and the blue-gray summer shorts
showing her shiny brown legs
through the open door.

Fleetingly I wonder what mail she’ll
bring me. But back to the Houston
funeral of George Floyd, victim
of city police brutality.

The choir, distancing themselves
due to the pandemic, the speakers,
the pastors lowering their safety masks.
The organ, the hymns, the brothers.

Then Rev. Al Sharpton, “‘I can’t breathe’
he said, and was choked for 8 minutes,
46 seconds — Breath is how God gives
you life, it is sanctified, it is sacred.”

She’s still sitting in the truck
looking down intently at her device
it seems. I watch the congregants,
hear sad and glorious words, lifting
George up, praising his honesty,
his leadership, his faith.

After 15 minutes she climbs out
of the truck, opens the rear door,
lifts the mail tub out for our building,
interrupting her concentration—
she our civil servant, an essential worker,
experiencing this near-personal funeral
on the job.

More songs, more lifting up of George.
She returns to the truck, empty tub
over her head, protection from the
sudden June downpour.

In her seat again, she stares at the device,
mourning in the postal truck. After
some time, I see the red brake light
come on, and she pulls away.

Marilyn Peretti of Glen Ellyn, IL, does too much thinking. And probably feeling. She has been published many times before at TheNewVerse.News.

QUARANTINE AUBADE

by Juditha Dowd

"Lifeline" by Pascal Campion

The trucker is hauling food. We often hear him down on
the river road around this hour, hitting his Jake brakes,
slowing his rig on the curves. The sound bounces up and out,
finds us here on College Hill—wide-awake at four o’clock,
trying to return to sleep. He pauses at the highway ramp,
crosses the river, picks up speed. Soon he’ll unload at a market,
where workers rush to stock the shelves, where items spurned
for years are in demand: dry beans, yeast and prunes.
And here in the dark I’m my grandmother’s little girl again,
helping to squeeze red dye into bags of oleomargarine, waiting
to eat the biscuits she’ll take from her small white oven
while she listens to the radio, hopes there may be a letter today
from my uncle in the Army. Always the waiting. For the
the morning paper, twice-daily mail. Always we want news.
Bless our neighbor leaving now for what must be essential work.
Beams from his headlights circle the room. Birds are beginning
to stir, recalling those childhood mornings when I rose ahead of
my family, roused by their chorus, lifted into the dawn on wings.
After breakfast I’ll weed radishes we planted on a day that seems
like years go. Despite a killing frost, they’ve sprouted leaves.
Light is on the way. See how the air is whitening? That there’s
food … and those who must be fed. No certainties but these today.

Juditha Dowd’s latest book is Audubon’s Sparrow, a verse biography in the voice of Lucy Bakewell Audubon, out this month from Rose Metal Press. She has contributed work to many journals and anthologies, including Poet Lore, Poetry Daily, Spillway, Ekphrasis, Rock & Sling, and Florida Review.

SONG OF THE OPEN ROAD

by Earl J Wilcox

From Frigid St. Louis to mild Florida; From Cold Chicago to Temperate Arizona. Spring Training Migrants: What the Trucks Carry on the Open Road.

O Sing us a early spring time song of the Open Road to the warm sun, the green grass, the soft breezes, the lure of a dream for a game and a team and great American pastime.

O take me to the Open Road, send my Truck on the Day, fill it  with my stuff, my life, my load.

O, Mighty Truck of the Open Road, bring my gear,  carry the stuff to transform us mortal men from hot stove junkie to spring time wizards.

O Red Truck, Blue Truck, Green Truck, every color truck bring my stuff, my special bats and helmets, gloves, my candy bars, cheese and crackers, my jock straps, a few hundred baseballs, uniforms, t-shirts, laundry detergent, my own bicycle, my shoes, socks, deodorant ,bubble gum, sun screen, sun flower seeds, tar, baby cribs, birth control, medical equipment, one load of Pennsylvania dirt, our money ball stats guy, string cheese, and Tylenol.

O Mighty Maker of the Open Road, give us a season filled with the hope of spring training, the vision and energy of the summer, and wisdom of autumn.


Earl Wilcox waits for baseball season while watching spring open in his back yard with daffodils, azaleas, and dogwoods in South Carolina.

IN THE FALLING DARK

by Devon Balwit 

Sheree Rumph of San Antonio prays over two of the 26 crosses erected in memory of the 26 people killed in a shooting in Sutherland Springs, Texas on Monday, Nov. 6, 2017. The shooting took place during a Sunday service at the Sutherland Springs First Baptist Church. (Jay Janner/Austin American-Statesman via AP via The Times-Picayune, November 7, 2017)

Each day I take my little target and go out.
I cling to my petiole—call it life—
I hope for no storm, no rending gust,
no one with a gun, a grudge, a common truck.

I cling to my petiole—call it life—
I shield its flicker with my hand, invite in
no one with a gun, a grudge, a common truck.
I wring the last green from my short day.

I shield my flicker with my hand, inviting in
only beauty, only the heroism of the ordinary.
I wring the last green from my short day.
I close the door on threat. I turn inward.

Only beauty, only the heroism of the ordinary,
please, people—not invective, not hate—
Close the door on threat, turn inward.
Listen to the breath and find the vital.

Please, people—not invective, not hate—
the human world is so late. It’s dusk.
Listen to the breath and find the vital.
I try. Every day, I’m a beginner.

The human world is so late. It’s dusk.
Each day, I take my little target and go out,
I try. Every day, I’m a beginner.
I hope for no storm, no rending gust.

Devon Balwit is a writer/teacher from Portland, OR. Her poems have appeared in TheNewVerse.News, Poets Reading the News, Rattle, Redbird Weekly Reads, Rise-Up Review, Rat's Ass Review, The Rising Phoenix Review, Mobius, What Rough Beast, and more. The author thanks Bruce Cockburn for the title of this poem.

DISCORD

by Judy Kaber 

A distance of about five feet
separates my car from the mud-
spattered blue pick-up truck
with the Trump/Pence sign
on the cab’s rear window. This
wouldn’t be such a surprise
except we’re in the parking lot
of the YMCA and I can’t help
but wonder which of us is
out of place. Red-necks don’t
come here to exercise, but then
I am not young or male or even
Christian, so maybe the world
splits into more layers than I
can count, maybe the thrum
of feet on the exercise machines
sings songs of longing for
the past that never was, maybe
the man from the pick-up truck
misses the canning factory
and the chicken plant and what
do I know of belief, of prayers
whispered in the night when
you can’t pay your taxes,
your landlord wants you out
by next week and you smoke
two packs a day just to keep
your head on straight.

Judy Kaber lives in Belfast, Maine, and her poems have appeared in numerous journals, both print and online, including Eclectica, Off the Coast, The Comstock Review, and The Guardian. Contest credits include the Maine Postmark Poetry Contest, the Larry Kramer Memorial Chapbook Contest, and, most recently, second place in the Muriel Craft Bailey Poetry Contest.

VACATION DURING A WEEK OF KILLINGS

by Gail Martin

A truck drove into a crowd at Bastille Day celebrations in Nice, France, leaving many dead and sending hundreds running for safety. —The New York Times, July 14, 2016. Photo by Eric Gaillard/Reuters.

One daughter posts a picture of her face, sad,
reading Hannah Arendt On Violence; my husband
watches Wimbledon, says he has no perspective
on it yet. One daughter is growing a son. Her app
says he’s the size of a coconut. Another texts
from the West: I can’t sleep -- I feel traumatized.
A client calls from home to say his anxiety’s up.
People kayak on the flat lake, ignoring the thunder.
This makes me anxious. The dog sleeps beneath
the dining room table. All I want is to read 89 Ways
to Love Summer!  Can we afford to let sleeping dogs lie?
I take my pills, prelude to a walk, and eat strawberries,
small and sweet, on Cheerios. Wheaties are more
American but my daughters can’t tolerate wheat.
How much can we tolerate? The storm is sweeping
across the lake. I need a megaphone to shout out
my grief and anger. My fear. If you hear thunder,
the warning repeats over and over on the news,
you’re close enough to be struck by lightning.

Gail Martin’s book Begin Empty-Handed won the Perugia Press Poetry prize in 2013 and was awarded the Housatonic Prize for Poetry in 2014. Her first book The Hourglass Heart (New Issues Press), was published in 2003. New work is forthcoming in Tar River Poetry and The Southern Review. Martin works as a psychotherapist in private practice in Kalamazoo, MI.

THE FATHER IN SUMMER PLAINETH FOR HIS SON

by Cally Conan-Davies






O western fire
Take this day back
Reverse the truck
Unburn the wreck.
The fire fighters
Of the forest service
Hell-bent to save us,
Rain down on them,
Drown every forest plant.
Then bring him home,
Because for every day to come
I can't.


Cally Conan-Davies hails from Tasmania. Her poems can be found in periodicals such as The Hudson Review, Subtropics, Poetry, Quadrant, The New Criterion, The Virginia Quarterly Review, The Sewanee Review, The Southwest Review, The Dark Horse,  Harvard Review and various online journals.

ABOUT APPLES

by Rick Gray





Yes, I heard about your bombing today.
Another improvised scrap of death
Planted inside a truckload of apples.

This isn’t about your success.
It’s about apples, driven by ordinary men
into this raped and hungry city every day.

Round, delicious things glowing yellow, green, red,
A traveling circus nourishing even beggars
Quick enough to lift the fallen.         

I have spied blue angels
Slip these wounded below burqas
And carry home your civilian dead 

And all along the muddy roadsides
People you cannot control pile them in little pyramids
Like temples to the God you hate

Who needs no prophet
or book
Only her sweet juice

And a mouth with a few real teeth
Willing to bite down hard
and chew.


Rick Gray was a finalist for the Editor's Award at Margie. He served in the Peace Corps in Kenya and currently teaches at the American University of Afghanistan in Kabul.