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Carlo C Gomez Jun 2023
I'm waterproof positive:
This may be John Hawkins's ship
But I've no idea why that matters.

This is disease infested waters,
And piracy is highly contagious,
I should know.

I grew up on the same street as money,
But he migrated to Los Angeles,
Where there was greater curb appeal.

This life is a house of stairs,
And no one walks
The plank better than me.

But all too soon
This old vessel is firewood
And tread board.

It might be the new world,
But the pilgrims are covered
In Spanish moss,
Mixed warning signs on their hats.

We pirates are forgetful escapists,
Doing high wire acts at sea,
To harbor regret is to mutiny
In thy heart,
I should know.
But I don't.

Seems my mind has gone
And given me the slip,
Meet me for a pint
At the Crooked Wig
And we'll talk shop...

Maybe.
Been sitting in my drafts for 2 years. Thought I would free it...
Zywa Nov 2022
In the new country

I follow a friend, stepping --


within his footprints.
"Går efter en vän" ("Walk behind a friend", 2009, Jila Mossaed)

Collection "Specialities"
neth jones Sep 2022
distress men
distress women     the children follow suit
rooted        to their calculation
   pick-pitted-
                 minds-eye-
                             bore-hole n' punction
         functional ?   they ponder the fault   idling in their programs din

rescue them ?
their fearsome egos     will gum you up
tup and rupture your goodwill

despair man
despair woman    the children groping at their heels
sealed and merry mated     to the manner     spools that habit
rabbits and fools back into the boil

assess
make a meal
  displace them ?
   their otherworldly longings ?
    wrong them welcome      into your loving bloom

this is how its done
here's a catalogue
  how big you've won
   better gig    than landing on the moon

distrust man
deface woman       the children drink from the wound
battle         become the saviour
behaviour shot against the mood
food to greet     the newly batched    cultural result
faulty
worthy of mention
the soiled spell
         going to drown though the generations
recreation
just trust   the serpent eye
and the lens of peddling assault   holds everything to its station
                                    for a jittering moment
                                    for a breakable moment
                                          a disgraced monument    
                                bereft         fidgeting in its place
MARK - last verse
Lily Apr 10
A is for Abigail, who shared with you a kindergarten trauma and
then forgot who you were in eighth grade, like Belinda, who
left without a word one sunday morning after mass, C is
Catalina, your best friend’s ex-best friend, who went
with you to Daana’s book launch in texas, and
Enrique, who you planned to room with in college but you hear from friends
crashed his car into a tree and joined the saints, but Flores had
another kid and his man bun is
slicker than ever and Gumaro, who you helped teach
english in fourth grade is still
hitting the gym beside Hiris, even as she
works at la perla full time and overtime, beside Isabella who
no white girl would talk to in middle school because they said she
smelled like dirt, or Juliana, punching
numbers into a cash register at the dollar general thinking
of falling in love with Kruz who made a
perfect vanilla cupcake candle in home ec but couldn’t
cook steak to save his life.  
Lucio remembers kissing you on the mouth in the church
nursery but he is now engaged to a white girl you’ve
never met, and he remembers a particular
messy Maria who would draw like her life
depended on it, and a Nadia who would cry in english 11
because her parents couldn’t help her with the homework
but still kiss him after her soccer games, who no longer
bothers to call Olivia, even though they were teammates for
a decade and now she works at her own sports shop with
a daughter who could have gone pro if only.
Profe, who was a migrant “helper” at your elementary school,
laughs at it all, remembering yelling at parents in spanglish,
although you heard her husband yelling at her on the phone at lunch,
laughing when Quito broke one of the chairs that the school bought with
its 4 million dollar bond that drained money and morale, who went
out with Romani and started a band in seventh grade that took
longer than usual to fizzle out, and the bullying stopped for a while, though
Sergio would never forget how it felt to bend down for hours with
bad black bruises up his back, wouldn’t ever stop
reliving every labored breath spent both here and there.  
And Thalia couldn’t even make a living, recalling almost
forgotten days of swingsets and slurping
pelon pelo rico tamarindo under the orange tube slide.  
Her ex-husband Umberto everybody but the feds
forgot about, and V is for Victor, the high school goalie who had to quit because he
strained his wrists in the fields, like Wanita, who is trying to raise
money for her second hip replacement, like father Xavier, who carves statues of
woodland creatures for the children he could never have, and
Yesenia, who sewed and sewed until her fingers curled and her
forehead wrinkled beyond repair, and she tells you that Zaida, who made the
best tamales in town, is now gone to the saints, and no longer
fears anything, even the government and their obsession with
small white slips of paper.

So much in a name, in a hyphen, in a tilde, but no, it
should be under V—“virgulilla,” and their names should be
written in your address book but instead
they’re in a list at some office in
the States underneath “undocumented” and “illegal.”
After John Keene’s ‘Phone Book,’ Dec 2021

hey y'all, it's been a while.  I'm trying to come back from hiatus and get back into writing and also to use my voice for bigger things.  I hope you like this poem and that it makes you think :)
Zywa Feb 2022
I penetrate her,

digging for her promises --


my soul roves about.
Immigrant
"Genker liefde" ("Genk love", 2017, Mustafa Kör)

Collection "Truder"
Francie Lynch Jul 2021
Kathleen Avenue still has houses,
But people left, and trees were felled;
The canopy across the street
Has lost some limbs
And many feet
Of children
Playing hide and seek.

One house, a brown-shingled frame
Is aging there as are our names;
The front yard doesn't boast corn
That Daddy grew
When first we landed;
Not knowing neighbours were offended
With farming behind green picket fences.

      so corn, cabbage and turnip too
      were left to rot. Daddy knew to
      strike when hot.

The locals weren't too much impressed
When Daddy taught them some respect.
The human smell of decaying turnip
Turned noses down that stood straight up. The front was never farmed again.
    
Recently, I passed that yard,
The picket fences gone;
And someone has a garden there,
The new arrivals,
If they care,
Really see the wisdom there.
I give a nod
To my Old Man,
An immigrant
Before his time.
All true.
DElizabeth May 2021
There are cracks in the mask
because there are cracks in the foundation.

Hazy,
what was it all like before we divvied our nation?

Mother's and children
helpless in separation.

Give me the good news
when all I see is complication.

Who decided what's ours isn't theirs?

Crossing, drowning, they're running out of flares.
Penny Z Mar 2021
You tear our kind away,
those pesky weeds        
                                    that stunt
your plump full seeds  -
that steal and cause decay.
You landed by fortune,
fortune of the windy chance -
you earned it. What is different is dangerous
less valued - not worth a glance.

Warm soil in-between your fingers,
You have power here in the garden,
Pulling and wrenching the stems from
home
We’re unwanted, not needed
Not useful, not beautiful,
Not enough,
                      but too much.
                                    

Strong weathered fingers grip our necks,
Trampled under steel studded boots,
We seep into the soil disappearing,
Just like you wanted us to.
Suffocating ignored as grassroots,
condemned to be always taboo.

Weeding is good, you say.
Weeding is important.
It keeps the garden healthy, comely,
presentable.
We’re the intruders, thieves!
in search for better light.
Worn down we grieve.
why do you see not our might?

A garden improved

Standing up I arch my back,
rusty and cramped.
Tiresome work removing the
unwanted.
My hands scratched and torn,
the limp bodies neatly packed,
the garden is reborn.


The flora look uniform now
no insulting dark stems,
only the long strong boughs
of rightful King Oak,

and no more of them.


But a king without his subjects is a peasant.
With our loss fades your treasured soil,
your sterling root networks anchoring your  
flowerbeds of wealth.
We are the pests,
we stole your soil,
so why does it grow grey?
You wanted growth
I heard you say.
You can’t have both.

What a nuisance.
Us or the decay?

So I am a pest, you say?
Well, to that I say, we pests always grow.
Your tulips and rose corrode,
but you reap what you sow.
No matter the hate that spits our existence,
the sharp teeth of the chainsaw or
poisonous pesticide bidding good riddance,
we are green, and life sustaining, and we are resistant.

The aim is not good riddance,
but co-existence.
An allegorical poem on the importance of assimilation of differences rather than separation
Gabriel Herrera Sep 2020
I wonder how my ancestors feel
Knowing their escape from home
Would lead
To children ***** in cages

Traced
Nameless
Unheard of conditions
Like their rabid dogs

But really puppies still needing their mothers milk

Who made those cages you call sanctuary
Who made those tinfoil sheets you call warmth
Who made those regulations?
Ripping the child from their parents grip
I've seen the ******* pictures
Those kids were strangling their mothers and fathers in order to not let go

There's no need for translation
This is universal
These children are treated like felons
With no warrant
No warning

Is this justice?
Does my so called president get off to this?

Is he not satisfied enough with his spray tan?

He takes it out on us?

I wake up in my bed
Every day I cant fathom
The nightmare those children wake up to
Alone with others like that look just like them.
Looking in the reflection their tears molded onto the shivering pavement

I cant even imagine

The thoughts that may race through their young and impressionable minds

Do they think they deserve it?
Do they think this is their fault?

If and when they do finally escape

How scarred will they be?

They already have a criminal record for being born

How will they survive in a society that imprisoned them before given an education

Before given a ******* a chance.
Sirad Jul 2020
I imagine you at my age
Younger, stronger and ambitious
You literally cracked your spine
Once healed, cracked again by soil foreign  
That bore you no fruit
But fruit were born from the womb
Of the love of your life

I imagine you had it all
But poverty was placed between your eyes
Tried to go back home
Catch the dream you once had
Build a home your children could inherit
But all they wanted, was to snuggle in your strength
Listen to a strong heartbeat
Reading them nursery rhymes

Tears begin to flood my vision
When I realise, your life
Is mirror to my own
I inherited recycled dreams and hope
From a land that bore me no fruit
When all I wanted, was to inherit extra time with you
Snuggle in your strength
And listen to lullabies
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