Mateo’s 8th Birthday

Elizabeth N. Flores 

January 5, 2025

Men and women and children 

are crossing the Laredo Bridge. 

For some their daily routine, 

for others an infrequent or unfamiliar journey. 

Most men are wearing hats, 

while some women carry umbrellas, 

protection from the scorching summer sun.

Mateo sits in the front seat of the car with his father 

as they near the checkpoint. 

They are talking about baseball and what it must be like to be the pitcher. 

When the car comes to a stop, 

Mateo watches his father gripping the steering wheel, 

looking straight ahead, stone-faced.

“I need to ask you the questions on this card,” 

the border agent says, holding the printed side upright

so Mateo’s father can see its official, government-orders look. 

Mateo notices at the top of the card 

in big letters, all capitalized, “MANIFEST.” 

Mateo is sure it’s an important word, 

and that he can spell it without looking if he needs to.

“And that’s your little boy?” the agent asks.  

Mateo doesn’t think he’s so little. 

He wonders if he should say

Yes, I am Mateo, I am eight, and today is my birthday. 

But his father responds quickly, affirmatively, 

giving Mateo’s name, and Mateo figures 

he should remain silent. 

Not long after they cross the bridge, 

Mateo’s father says in a relaxed voice, 

“Mijo, give me a hand when we get 

to your tía’s house.” He smiles 

as he tells Mateo “You’re old enough 

to help carry my tool bags.”

“Ok, Dad,” Mateo replies, with a smile 

that the family says is just like his father’s. 

One bag contains hammers, screwdrivers, and wrenches. 

Rags too, some clean, some oily, some with the smell of sweat.

The other bag is filled with what Mateo imagines 

are hundreds of nails, along with his father’s rosary 

for blessings and safety.

Once they park in his tía’s driveway, 

Mateo wastes no time. He reaches 

into the backseat of the car and grabs with both hands 

the strap of the bag with the nails and his father’s rosary. 

It is heavy, but Mateo is sure he won’t drop it. 

Elizabeth N. Flores, Professor Emeritus of Political Science, taught for over 40 years at Del Mar College and was the college’s first Mexican American Studies Program Coordinator. Her poems have appeared in the Texas Poetry Assignment, Corpus Christi Writers (2022 and 2023 editions) anthologies edited by William Mays, the Mays Publishing Literary Magazine, and the Windward Review.

Concertina Conundrum

Chip Dameron

February 18, 2024

early January 2024

Three days ago, a young musician

performed in an auditorium in Arizona,

playing the Irish jigs and traditional

folk songs that comprise her repertoire. 

Today she drives up to Shelby Park 

in Eagle Pass, steps out of her rental car,

and stands next to the park entrance,

now fenced off and locked, and plays

her concertina, squeezing a slow dirge

that floats and spins through the air,

honoring the 700 wooden crosses

(adults’ white, children’s pink or blue)

in rows across the field, memorializing

those who died along the Rio Grande

this past year. Two National Guardsmen

sitting in a Humvee inside the fence 

step out and motion for her to move on,

but she continues playing, the bellows

unfolding and folding, sending music

past the soldiers and toward the river,

toward those determined to come across.

A young woman stands on the bank

and shivers in the afternoon sunlight

as she stares at the string of buoys

in mid-river and then at the glinting

razor tips on the concertina wire

curling along the opposite bank.

After her husband was murdered

by a rebel faction in El Salvador,

she pleaded with her older brother

to take her and her two children

somewhere safe, and he, fearing 

for his life too, helped her gather up 

bare essentials and head northward. 

Weeks of travel have brought them

to this crossing point. She tightens

the shawl holding her baby against

her chest, looks at her toddler locked

against her brother’s back, and nods

twice to her brother. As they begin

wading, she hears the faint sadness

of a song from across, and continues.

Chip Dameron’s most recent book is Relatively Speaking: Poems of Person and Place, which combines a collection of his poems with a collection by poet Betsy Joseph. He is a member of the Texas Institute of Letters and a former Dobie Paisano Fellow.

Border Thoughts

Betsy Joseph

February 18, 2024

                    “Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,

                      I lift my lamp beside the golden door!”

                                                                                          Emma Lazarus, “The New Colossus”

Crossing 

borders once meant

freedom from oppression,

far better opportunities.

Once meant.

Now, though,

border crossings

portend many dangers:

razor wire and deportations.

Beware.

Forget

the fairytale

of welcoming all those

yearning so to be free and safe.

Not now.

Forward

and then backward

we roll, ever trying 

to recall our pledge, gone awry,

once meant.

Betsy Joseph lives in Dallas and has poems that have appeared in several journals and anthologies. She is the author of two poetry books published by Lamar University Literary Press: Only So Many Autumns (2019) and most recently, Relatively Speaking (2022), a collaborative collection with her brother, poet Chip Dameron. In addition, she and her husband, photographer Bruce Jordan, have produced two books, Benches and Lighthouses, which pair her haiku with his black and white photography.

About Floyd Bennett Field

Jeffrey G. Moss

February 11, 2024

Out here the Canarsee  — in the Lenni language,

Canarsee means “fenced-in community” — 

once paddled and fished these barrier marshes. 

Now the migrants from the Mexican border are bussed

blind to the southern shores of Brooklyn, the broken

land Dutch settlers swindled from the native people. 

Out here Howard Hughes and Wrong Way Corrigan 

took off, and John Glenn, after sustaining 

transcontinental, supersonic speed, landed. 

Now this tattered, temporary tent city, 

pitched on historically cracked tarmac,

warehouses the poor, cold, huddled masses.

Out here the winter winds bite and sting.

The sanctuary city’s distant skyline prompts 

salty tears, like those that flow at births and funerals.

Jeffrey G. Moss spent 32 years guiding 13/14-year-olds in crafting worlds. Since leaving the classroom his poetry and creative non-fiction have appeared in Hoot Review, Humana Obscura, Cagibi, Hunger Mountain Review, Under the Gum Tree, Hippocampus, and elsewhere. 

All the Knots in the Earth

Vincent Hostak

February 4, 2024

“Our lives, our stories, flowed into one another's, were no longer our own, individual, discrete.”

-Salman Rushdie

Yesterday, I wrote about a work of art,

calling it “unapologetically kind-hearted,”

as if the line around fellowship shifted overnight, 

stolen by the pull of a single, darker sphere.

Today, two magpies lit upon a wire.

I imagined one remarking: “We must secure this border.”

Another, gripping the string pinned to the sky,

replied: “Why, is it moving?”

Perhaps they were overcome by vibrations

along the rumbling perch, their bird brains

assuming energy moves in one direction only,

as if treaties were meant to benefit only one village.

“The small brown birds will steal our food,” said one,

as if their privileged blue-white legions 

could never overpower the sparrows.

Some construct an enemy who favors their might.

“But, aren’t we defending against the Crows?”

The first fanned one great wing over its beak

and whispered a reply through stiff feathers:

“There is time to injure the Crow.  This is urgent.”

Tiny birds merged into a ball of collective warmth.

Geese overhead in their common costumes

Played joint acrobatics a magpie once knew-

before perching here like a foreman of a jury. 

Geese range in a region where borders vaporize

sometimes closer to the musica universalis.

While below, saplings stretch ubiquitously,

blind to all the knots in the earth.

Vincent Hostak is a poet, essayist, and media producer. He’s held long-time residences in Austin and Colorado, where he’s also worked in documentary and network television/film production.  His poetry may be found in the print journals Sonder Midwest (#5)/Illinois, The Langdon Review of the Arts in Texas, and the 2022/2023 anthology Lone Star Poetry: Championing Texas Verse, Community and Hunger Relief. He is currently appointed to the 2024 editorial team at Asymptote, an international journal dedicated to the art of English language translations of contemporary world literature.  He’s a two-time Summer Scholar at Naropa University’s Summer Writing Program, directed by Anne Waldman.

Eres Tu

Shelley Armitage

January 21, 2024

after the popular love song of the same name

You, eres tu

the swimmer struggling up a clay slick beach

You    who cannot swim

thirst in waters you cannot drink

Desparecida on the border   that

liminal space embraced by cactus thorns

you   taste   a stomach so empty

so brined    in necessary love 

And you      the backpack    left by the border wall

hold tight a child’s skirt, wrestle discarded bottles

You you     carry a pentimento of loss

You   earth so proud   that you   crack open

sending angry warnings 

to the builders blocking monarchs

shaking walls tipped in barbed wire

You   the soldier who spit when waved

at     reply to our broken Spanish   puta  

and to you     on the other side of the wall

helicopter a ceaseless tsunami of wind

when you   you   and    you   visited

there      just to see

You       wet cheek   in rivulets running

this rough road to hope and prayers

You     you       eres tu

Would I give you the water from my fountain?

the fire from my home?

the bonfire made for sharing?

Eres tu   eres tu

You carry a child wound tight to your breast

through bonfire, bombs, discountenance, starvation

   desesperada      You

cry out to chatting tv hosts

y quien eres tu

And who are you?

Dr. Shelley Armitage is a professor emerita at the University of Texas at El Paso.  She is author of ten books, the most recent a collection of poems, A Habit of Landscape, its title from a line in her memoir, Walking the Llano: A Texas Memoir of Place. 

Back and Forth

Suzanne Morris

January 21, 2024

On a sultry July afternoon

I watch

a weathered, brown-skinned man– 

I do not know his name– 

drive a riding mower

back and forth, back and forth

over the scraggly lawn.

He wears a long-sleeved shirt,

work gloves, and

a floppy-brimmed hat with

stained sweatband.

His face is concealed

behind sun shades;

a bandana covers his

nose to his chin.

As he rides back and forth,

back and forth,

shaving long, uniform stripes

from the grass,

I’m thinking of the ICE raid

set for Sunday–

it’s been all over the news– 

and I wonder if he is

a target for deportation

or even if not, perhaps his

wife, or parent, child or grandchild

will be gone from his side

by Monday.

How do you say

Peace be with you, come Sunday

in Spanish? I wonder.

Just stay inside your house

and refuse to answer the door. 

But then I imagine panic rising

like the cloud of dust behind him

as he fears I am about to

pick up the phone.

How do you say,  Don’t worry,

my friend?

Back and forth, back and forth,

he goes

until all the grass is

cut down to size,

and the man has vanished

as though he had never been here.

Suzanne Morris is a novelist with eight published works and a poet.  Her poems have appeared in numerous anthologies, and online poetry journals including, The Texas Poetry Assignment, The New Verse News, and Stone Poetry Quarterly.  Ms. Morris resides in Cherokee County, Texas.

Border Burlesque

Milton Jordan

January 21, 2024

Stars of their own personal podcasts,

more prone to posture than to policy

politicians of a certain stripe travel 

at public expense to border crossing points

in cities with major media outlets

where, in carefully formatted pronouncements

they declare deep concern for the failure

of opponents’ policies, and propose  

their own programs in barest outline

focused primarily on increased use 

of life-threatening border barriers.

Milton Jordan lives with Anne in Georgetown, Texas. He co-edited the first Texas Poetry Assignment anthology, Lone Star Poetry, Kallisto Gaia Press, 2022.

Fronteras

Gary S. Rosin

January 21, 2024

Crossing the border,
it is so hard to forget
things you left behind,

to keep the past from hiding
the path your feet now follow. 

You still remember
your mother in her grave,
back in your village,

the butterfly that haunted
the church during her Mass—

it seemed her spirit
lingered to watch over
her sons and daughters,

give them strength to walk alone
the journeys of their lives. 

But your path leads you
away from your village,
your mother’s grave,

across the border, too far
to bring ofrendas for her

on Dia de Los Muertos.

Gary S. Rosin’s work has appeared in Chaos Dive Reunion (Mutabilis Press 2023), Concho River Review, MacQueen’s Quarterly, Sulphur River, and Texas Poetry Calendar, and elsewhere. He has two chapbooks, Standing Inside the Web (Bear House Publishing 1990), and Fire and Shadows (Legal Studies Forum 2008).