Vox Populi
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Joan E. Bauer: Brown Skin | Probable Cause
Sunday June 8 at the federal detention center.
Corner of Alameda & Temple, Downtown LA.
There’s ICE or what the locals call la migra.
Also protesters & the National Guard.
If they come to your house, you have the right
to remain silent. If they stop your car,
keep your hands on the wheel. Mostly peaceful,
then someone’s throwing rocks & bottles.
They’re answered with tear gas, rubber bullets.
Orders to disperse.
A Honduran immigrant & his family arrive
for a routine check-in, but the father’s told:
Take everything out of your pockets.
His wife pregnant. Will he ever return?
My niece says they’ve raided the carwash.
Her former nanny, a longtime citizen,
afraid to leave home. Will they believe me?
My English not so good.
Neighborhoods empty. Taco & donut shops,
even the barber shops closed.
What happens to artichokes, blueberries,
lettuce & cashews, when the workers are gone?
What happens to babies & children, mothers
& grandparents, when the fathers are gone?
For now, federal agents are turned away
at Dodger Stadium. What happens to baseball,
America’s old pastime, when the fans,
the vendors, even the players are gone?
~~~~
Copyright 2025 Joan E. Bauer
Joan E. Bauer is the author of three full-length poetry collections, Fig Season (Turning Point, 2023), The Camera Artist (Turning Point, 2021), and The Almost Sound of Drowning (Main Street Rag, 2008). She divides her time between Venice, CA and Pittsburgh, PA where she co-curates the Hemingway’s Summer Poetry Series with Kristofer Collins.
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Thank you Joan for using your art to be an exemplar of compassion in action🙏
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Thank you all for your kind and thoughtful comments.
Much appreciated. And yes, mass incarceration has been
“leveraged into a major industry.” Thanks to Michael Simms,
as always, for his longtime and generous support of my work.
To better days and in solidarity, jb
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Thank you for this poem, Joan, and for all you do for poetry and justice.
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The drive to mass incarcerate is back, albeit under a slightly modified banner. Tom I-never-took-bribe Holman is a prison industrial complex shill who even now is handing out bloated budgets to Ice and their ancillary Alcatrazes. Beware of shovel-ready suits raving about the need for more security. In my experience most detention/corrections officers, like cops, are pretty decent, although certainly the asshole factor is higher in their particular groups. But the admin and all those prison-for-profit industry goons in the shadows behind them? Fascist crooks almost to a person, their unofficial motto “Overcrowding is Job Security.”
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I agree, Matt. Incarceration has been leveraged into a major industry.
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It’s the stuff of nightmares (daymares, too), and I’m grateful Joan writes so eloquently and forcefully on the hideous issues confronting us daily.
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I’m grateful for Joan’s work as well.
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True, sadly. Joan Bauer’s word gone haunts the poem.
As an aside, of a sort, I also read Bauer’s poem Bird’s Landing, Monongahela. It’s linked to here on Vox. https://voxpopulisphere.com/2019/01/09/joan-e-bauer-birds-landing-monongahela It feels like a an apt image for our times. I recommend a reading of that remarkable narrative poem, if you have the time.
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Thanks, Jim. I admire Joan Bauer’s poems because she takes on historical and political subjects, widening the scope of American poetry beyond personal narrative.
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Blatant racism and the GESTAPO are winning. I hope there will be elections in 2026, even though I fear there won’t be. If there are, I hope even the most diehard Trump supporters will begin to see who hurts them.
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The Nazis were eventually defeated in Germany, but not before destroying the entire country.
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Exactly. The Thousand-Year Reich lasted 12 years. That’s a long time in a country’s life. And only after a Word War and millions of dead and maimed. Trump has just found out that in the Ukraine they can’t change president while at war. I fear the worst, especially now that they have re-christened the Defense Department.
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I’m sick with this! Will we all live long enough and have to die in these conditions? Some of us are dying in and by it now. The wrong ones are being taken away & our joy with them.
I must now think of Joan, such a seasoned eloquent mind. She has captured plenty of lightning and knows what ground to stuff it into. Her arms rise into the air, hands stretched wide!
Strike me! She shouts to heaven.
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A righteous shout, Sean. Thank you!
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