VETTING THE REFUGEES

by Amit Majmudar

Image source: CBC Radio

Under the vest, something was ticking.
It ticked, ticked, ticked. A heart?
The faces all were human faces,
Salt-stained from the trail of tears
And the sea spray of their middle passage.
Their God was not our God,
But their children were our children
Discovered face down on the strand.
Treasures, buried in the sand.
In their passports we saw the faces
We recognized, or thought we did,
From last night’s news. The same? A match?
Anger, anguish, both unshaven
And praying in the same direction
To God, their God, the same, a match.
And there were babies, yes, and widows,
And gray professors speaking English—
No tests for mercy. No, the test
Was the twenty-year-old man whose face
We recognized, or thought we did;
Whose passport might encode an omen
Like scripture, entrails, curling smoke.
And so, interrogating those
Who came to us for mercy, we
Interrogated mercy in a chair:
Can hatred hide in suffering?
Can wisdom hide in fear?—
And so the line became a lineup
Eyed through a two-way mirror.


Amit Majmudar is a widely published poet, novelist, and essayist. His next book of poetry, Dothead, is forthcoming from Alfred A. Knopf in March 2016.

SUFFER THE CHILDREN

by George Salamon

Children at a migrant shelter in Tenosique, Mexico. A United States plan aims to spare children a dangerous trek across Mexico, but "Not a single child has entered the United States through the Central American Minors program since its establishment in December." —The New York Times, November 6, 2015; Photo credit Meridith Kohut for The New York Times.

President Obama promised to help kids escape
Street gangs, extortion and sexual assault
In places like El Salvador.
More than 5,400 children have applied to
Join their parents in the United States.
What's held them up from coming here?
It's red tape, you see, good old Yankee bureaucracy.
Homeland Security worked feverishly and interviewed
Ninety children in just eleven months, but
Only 10 qualified as refugees, while
75 were recommended for temporary entry
Known, I kid you not, as "humanitarian parole."
For the rest, it's life as usual in the murder capital of
The world and the runner-up cities.
"It's pathetic that no child has come through the program,"
One bleeding-heart critic said of how things work
In Washington DC.
To her, and to the children yearning to be safe, I say:
You must understand what Frank Zappa told us years ago:
In America "Politics is the entertainment division
Of the Military-Industrial Complex."
Sorry, kids, try to be patient.
But if our show comes on too late for you,
We wish you good luck in any future
Endeavor you choose to undertake.


George Salamon taught German literature and culture in several East colleges, served as staff reporter on the St. Louis Business Journal and senior editor for Defense Systems Review. He contributes from St. Louis, MO to the Gateway Journalism Review, Jewish Currents and TheNewVerse.News.