COST ANALYSIS

by Ed Bennett

When the Senate passed an expensive border-security measure two weeks ago, the fate of immigration reform in that chamber was all but sealed. The amendment made the overhaul easier to swallow for some Senate Republicans, paving the way for its passage last week. But the added measures also mean the government won't be saving as much money as first thought, according to a new Congressional Budget Office estimate. --Niraj Chokshi, National Journal, July 3, 2013

It’s all over, as they say,
except for the shouting.

Sixty votes obtained
on the contrails of the last election, the promise of presidents to come;

but shout they will
with every word and sentiment
aimed at brown skins and accents, that brave new world of inclusion.

Lets do the math:
six billion to open the door,
forty five thousand per head
to keep out the rest,
twelve million votes, give or take,
new to this canvas of electoral politics.

If you cannot stop the rush of history
or the perfidy of the Upper House,
do the math,
run the numbers,
call the count until the figures
roll up against a frail economy
to ask the question:
“Can we afford?”
“Dare we spend?”

Then we will digitize them,
distill their humanity into dollars and cents,
(they will be easier to ignore that way)
and our knock about faith
will be justified with numbers
as smooth as the cash count
at a teller’s window,

as empty as a hypocrite heaven
on an unexpected judgement day.


Ed Bennett is a poet and reviewer living in Las Vegas, NV. His works have appeared in The Externalist, Touch: The Journal of Healing, The Lavender Review, Quill and Parchment and Lilipo. He is a staff editor for Quill and Parchment Magazine, the recipient of a Pushcart Nomination and the author of “A Transit of Venus”.

A DREAM ACT

by Sandra Larson

        In memory of Joaquin Luna Jr.

18-year-old Joaquin Luna Jr. took his own life in November 2011 in his home in Mission, Texas. His parents reported he was depressed because, although a very good student, he was receiving only rejection letters from colleges and was also disappointed when the Dream Act failed to pass through the US Congress.  He did receive one acceptance letter after his death. 

Image source: Tucson Citizen

 

He pressed the revolver

underneath his chin

and fired.  

Its force

toppling

his forest

of feeling,

a wind storm

sapping his life

pieces now

splattered

on the bathroom tiles.

Quiet,

hear the dripping

of hope, the draining

of dreams for college,

a career in engineering.  Blue-

prints on the floor.

His desk is neat.

Letters stacked

upon it ask,

Are you a citizen?

The steely word –illegal?

Illegal, illegal

echoes

through the rooms

ricocheting

off his parents,

brothers’ grief.

The only response,

of puffed-up politicians,

Build a wall, build a wall, a wall!

America shoots another one.

A native of New Jersey, Sandra Sidman Larson is a retired manager and leader from the nonprofit world in the Twin Cities of Minnesota who has lived and traveled coast to coast and across the seven continents for work and for adventure. She’s been writing poetry for a quarter century and most recently she was selected for the Foreword Program at The Loft Literary Center in Minneapolis, a program established to assist promising writers produce a manuscript for publication. Along the way she has seen her poems appear in magazines and journals and she also has three published chapbooks.  In 1996 poet Naomi Shihab Nye nominated her for a Pushcart Prize.

HAIKU IN THE MODERN ERA

by Sandra Eisdorfer

(Photo: NASA Goddard)

    initiatives:
    immigration  gun control
    onto mindfulness

    choice: Roe at 40
    diplomacy  not bullets
    meditation soon

    Arab spring winters
    climate  changes coastlines now
    await inner peace


Sandra Eisdorfer was a university press editor (Duke, University of North Carolina Press, Oxford), now teaches writing classes at the Osher Lifelong Learning Institute at Duke University.