In this visual poem, Markus Kempken explores specific objects — spoons, spatulas, flutes — and the way they trigger memories of his childhood abuse.
Catherine Doty’s pitiless poems beautifully show us what we don’t want to see: children’s poverty, abuse, neglect. And their meanness. Poor children living in squalor, which Doty’s language often veils in lyrical glamor.
On the other hand, the open handed
blows left scarce a mark, applied to your head or neck
We weren’t a talking family
especially when it came
to discussing why I locked myself
in the bathroom upstairs
Buskers is the story of Packo, a young Dubliner, and Milos, a Romanian immigrant, who battle to secure a space to beg at a Dublin train station. After a comical … Continue reading →
You stood, small and mute,
on the stoop where she’d left you
with a tiny, plastic suitcase,
like a bad joke, beside you.
This was our childhood.
We were all left
to scavenge the woods
Boarding school, a peculiarly British form of abuse, has devastating impacts not only on the boarders, but on those they grow up to dominate.
He went out. Into the ocean’s black maw. To save. To rescue. Didn’t, as they say, come back. Death is funny like that, precise, dissolute.
The Trump administration has taken a giant step in trying to abolish the very idea of human rights as a part of the country’s identity.
With the agency under fire for holding children in deplorable conditions and over racist and misogynistic Facebook posts, one agent speaks about what it’s like to do his job. “Somewhere down the line people just accepted what’s going on as normal.”
Debating the fate of jailed migrant children is important, but the life-and-death crisis that they have been thrown into demands immediate action.
A federal judge found the department’s own records disturbing and ordered the names of the accused agents made public. Now, DHS has taken its fight against doing so to the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.
For Willem, age 3 . We are lost. . Holding you tight, the drunks pawing me . as I weave through the stalls sticky with beer and urine . looking … Continue reading →