CLAMPDOWN AT DILLEY DETENTION CENTER

by Ellen Romano

Children detained at the immigrant family detention center in Dilley, Texas, speaking with ProPublica reporter Mica Rosenberg over video call. Clockwise from top left: Diana Crespo, Luka Mora, Juan Nicolas Mo, Alexander Perez, Amalia Arrieta, Mayra Delgado. Mica Rosenberg/ProPublica. Click here to donate to ProPublica.

 

Imagine the children’s drawings, 

a family of three, standing in a cage, 

a family of five, standing in a cage, their faces blank,

a family of seven lying down in a cage, labelled

with the words, me quiero ir,  I want to go home. 

 

Imagine the children’s letters,

We are kidnapped, help.

There’s an agent here, he’s watching us.

I can’t see Willi, accompanied by a picture of a pet cat.

 

On the day the art supplies are confiscated,

crayons, pencils, drawing paper,

the letters and pictures are seized as well,

portraits of friends, the tracing of a child’s hand,

tears and a frowning face in the palm,

even a five year-old’s picture of a peaked roof house,

lit from one corner by an inextinguishable sun.

 

One mother saves a handful of shredded pages,

all that is left of her daughter’s drawings. In a place

that is never warm enough, another mother hides

the drawings of as many children as she can

in the sleeves of her puffy jacket, carries them

everywhere. 

 

Imagine a government that tries to steal 

a child’s ability to imagine, imagine a five-year old

wearing a detention uniform, a replacement 

for the blue, bunny-eared jacket taken from him,

the conejo that shared his name,

 

imagine a child’s voice too dangerous to be heard,

though no louder than the sound

a crayon makes on a scrap of paper.

Author’s note: All descriptions of children's letters and art work were taken from various news articles except for the description of a five-year old's picture of a house, which as an elementary school educator I feel is quite typical.

Ellen Romano, she/her, is an educator, mother, grandmother, widow, and beekeeper living with her dog, Doc, in Hayward, California. She is the winner of Third Wednesday’s 2023 Poetry Prize, and won second place in Naugatuck River Review’s 2023 Narrative Poetry Contest. Other work has appeared in Lascaux Review, The Deadlands, december magazine, and other publications. 

A RECOLLECTION ON PEARL HARBOR DAY

by Katherine Leonard

It's blotchy the past

the silent man

in his uniforms

 

the child knows his withdrawn presence

but sometimes he would play

with her    for short bursts       when she was very little

 

he lived in a world of diesel and flame

oil and water mixed on the destroyer deck

bomb dropped where he stood 5 minutes before

 

gun turret melted metal and pieces of arm

face blood leg and black smoke

his men faceless except in his memory

 

daily    weekly            yearly the men lay 

submerged in his South Pacific 

they were with him through his submarine assignment

 

in the mouth of the River Kwai          bands of broken brothers

breaks the hearts of the survivors

breaking broken like metal shards 

 

until one day

that fragile plank holding those shiny dress

officer shoes broke

 

And he with that plank and metal splinters

sank too

consumed by the black rolling sea

 

of his mind now in command

of his hand

on the rope

 

Author's Note: Poem for my father, Commander Robert E. Leonard, USN Ret. who served in the South Pacific in WWII at a time when PTSD was unknown and silent men and women were numerous and all rejoiced mightily at the fall of fascism in Germany, in Japan and in Italy.

Katherine Leonard is the author of the chapbook Requiem for the Beekeeper (Bottlecap Press 2024). Her poems have been published in Sonora Review, Querencia Press Anthologies, Hole in the Head Review, Speckled Trout Review, FERAL, Allium and Stone Canoe among other journals and anthologies. She is a graduate of the Syracuse YMCA Writer's Voice (formerly Downtown Writers Center) Pro Program in poetry. She has been a chemist, a geologist and an oncology nurse/nurse practitioner. Her writing has been deeply influenced by time spent in New Mexico, Texas and Colorado for space and heat and Vermont and Maine for ice and clarity and by living in Washington, DC for lies and redemption. She is married to the woman with fire in her guitar.

GIRLS SAY YES

Poem for Veterans Day

by Sandra Anfang

Pictured L to R: Joan Baez, Pauline Baez Marden, Mimi Farina in this 1968 poster, from a Jim Marshall photograph, promoting draft resistance during the Vietnam War. Source: National Museum of American History, Smithsonian Institution

to boys who say no.

The words ring hollow

in my ears like a looped refrain

from a scratched LP

a not-so-distant memory.

 

Aligned with the movement

I nodded and signed on. I never

gave my body—much less

heart—to a man in uniform, unless he worked

in the service of people, animals, or trees.

 

But what about the other war

the one that ogled us

from leering unshaved faces

from portraits on greenbacks

from slave ships and pedophile priests?

 

Blissfully unaware of the battle

that raged behind clenched teeth

we sailed along, soothed by the

waters of our beliefs, decades

before our lips would shape the words me too.

Sandra Anfang is the author of three poetry collections and her work has been published in numerous journals. She's also a visual artist, editor, poetry teacher in the schools, and host of a long-running poetry series. She lives in Northern California, where she looks for good trouble every day.

ANOTHER MEMORIAL DAY

by Howard Winn

NORWALK, CT — While stationed in northeast India during World War II, Nick Samodel repaired cargo planes that hauled supplies over the towering Himalaya Mountains to allied soldiers fighting the Japanese. “We had five airbases close to the mountains,” said Samodel, who served as an aircraft mechanic in the U.S. Army Air Corps. “We had to change the engines and fix oil leaks — that was a big problem because at high altitudes the oil leaks out through the seals. It takes a lot of maintenance. We lost some planes. They found one 10 years ago on the side of a mountain.” On Monday, Samodel, 97, of Norwalk,  served as grand marshal in the 2018 Memorial Day Parade. —The Hour, May 26, 2018

Summer begins
and the ice cream shop
on the corner
opens for the season
while the families
gather on the corner
of Route 77 and Shore
Road to applaud
the earnest children
in the high school band
marching by led by the
grizzled World War II
survivor wearing his
old uniform which he
must preserve in a clothes
bag at the back of a closet
to remember once a year
the deaths in the Battle
of the Bulge or the killings
in the Western Pacific or
perhaps just service in Army
Supply in New Jersey where
heroes not quite lurked in view of
the sea and vacation beaches
and waited for discharge
while spending time being
entertained by the young
women volunteering for
time to party in the USO
so war could be forgotten
for a social moment to be
resurrected each year on
Memorial Day dedicated to
the waste of war even good ones
for patriotism is both the flaw
and the consequence of nationalism
even when reduced to jingoism


Howard Winn's novel Acropolis is published by Propertius Press. He has poems in the Pennsylvania Literary Journal and in Evening Street Magazine.