Essentially Stateless looks at human rights violation and what it's like to be stateless within Australia's immigration detention system. The voice of asylum-seeker, Said Imasi, has been diminished, trampled on, and ignored for eight years.
Beyond Bravery remembers the life of Witold Pilecki--the only person to volunteer to enter a German concentration camp. He was a soldier of the Second Polish Republic and was tortured and executed in 1948. His story was suppressed by the Soviets for over 40 years. His extraordinary bravery was largely forgotten until recently.
Telling the Stories highlights the intentional and politically motivated systematic disenfranchisement of African American voters in Georgia, USA, during the 2018 mid-term elections.
No Exaggeration is about the struggle transgender people face in claiming their identity at a time when politicians seek to erase that very identity.
~ K.V. Martins
Essentially Stateless
A man without a past: a man without a future.
He believes
but cannot prove
he was born in Spain’s Canary Islands,
to a mother from Western Sahara.
He knows nothing about his father
he was trafficked
He has lived a life on the peripheries
an existence sometimes outside the law
Imasi arrived in Australia – intending to pass through
But he has been detained –
without allegation, charge, or trial –
for nearly eight years
there is no country on earth
that accepts him as their citizen
He speaks fluent English, his “ninth or 10th language”
and one learned in detention
I have no words to explain to you
Every day I am crushed, every day is another life sentence.
And there is nothing I can do. They told me I had
no choices.
He believes
but cannot prove
he was born in Spain’s Canary Islands,
to a mother from Western Sahara.
He knows nothing about his father
he was trafficked
He has lived a life on the peripheries
an existence sometimes outside the law
Imasi arrived in Australia – intending to pass through
But he has been detained –
without allegation, charge, or trial –
for nearly eight years
there is no country on earth
that accepts him as their citizen
He speaks fluent English, his “ninth or 10th language”
and one learned in detention
I have no words to explain to you
Every day I am crushed, every day is another life sentence.
And there is nothing I can do. They told me I had
no choices.
This is a found poem.
Source: Doherty, Ben. “'Every Day I Am Crushed': the Stateless Man Held without Trial by Australia for Eight Years.” The Guardian, Guardian News and Media, 14 Jan. 2018.
Beyond Bravery
The man volunteered - a cavalryman
he thought his days of military service
were over.
Let himself be caught, became prisoner 4859.
Hard to imagine how hard to stay alive in the camps.
After the war, his final report. It appeared clear
the Soviets didn’t intend to leave.
Marked as an enemy of the state,
any hope melted away.
He didn’t reveal any names -
told his wife these words:
I cannot live. They killed me.
Because compared to them
Auschwitz
was just a trifle.
The sentence was obvious –
Death
Executed
Shot
in the back
of the head.
He was 47.
They tried to erase him
no one knows where his body is now.
he thought his days of military service
were over.
Let himself be caught, became prisoner 4859.
Hard to imagine how hard to stay alive in the camps.
After the war, his final report. It appeared clear
the Soviets didn’t intend to leave.
Marked as an enemy of the state,
any hope melted away.
He didn’t reveal any names -
told his wife these words:
I cannot live. They killed me.
Because compared to them
Auschwitz
was just a trifle.
The sentence was obvious –
Death
Executed
Shot
in the back
of the head.
He was 47.
They tried to erase him
no one knows where his body is now.
This is a found poem.
Source: Lucjan, Damian. “Witold Pilecki - The Incredible Story of The Man Who Volunteered for Auschwitz.” WAR HISTORY ONLINE, 5 June 2017.
Telling the Stories
of people purged
to be sure, an eye-popping number — as with all statistics,
the abstract number can obscure
the human toll.
92 years old, dressed to the nines.
Except
they didn’t let her vote. Purged, erased
her cousin, Martin Luther King Jr., murdered.
Her granddaughter, crying inconsolable tears.
Miss Christine (that’s how they speak in Georgia)
Never talked politics, just church gossip and family.
And she sang
We shall overcome
but her name remained missing
It would not be counted.
God bless America.
If there is any hope here, it is the long process
of restoring democracy.
Sometimes
investigative reporting accomplishes more
than lining bird cages
It’s looking more like 1963 than 2018.
It's strange
we are still talking
about whether
votes should be counted.
to be sure, an eye-popping number — as with all statistics,
the abstract number can obscure
the human toll.
92 years old, dressed to the nines.
Except
they didn’t let her vote. Purged, erased
her cousin, Martin Luther King Jr., murdered.
Her granddaughter, crying inconsolable tears.
Miss Christine (that’s how they speak in Georgia)
Never talked politics, just church gossip and family.
And she sang
We shall overcome
but her name remained missing
It would not be counted.
God bless America.
If there is any hope here, it is the long process
of restoring democracy.
Sometimes
investigative reporting accomplishes more
than lining bird cages
It’s looking more like 1963 than 2018.
It's strange
we are still talking
about whether
votes should be counted.
This is a found poem.
Source: Rozsa, Matthew. “Disenfranchised in Georgia: Telling the Stories of People Purged by Brian Kemp.” Salon, Salon.com, 16 Nov. 2018.
No Exaggeration
Trump wants to / erase transgender people / under the law
to define sex as either / male or female
unchangeable
determined by the genitals / subject to genetic testing
it’s entirely unclear how intersex people would fit into this / federal registry of genitals
Transphobia
No exaggeration
to define sex as either / male or female
unchangeable
determined by the genitals / subject to genetic testing
it’s entirely unclear how intersex people would fit into this / federal registry of genitals
Transphobia
No exaggeration
This is a found poem.
Source: “No Exaggeration: Trump Wants to Erase Transgender People.” ThinkProgress.
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K.V. Martins is a poet and short story writer from New Zealand. Her work has appeared in The Copperfield Review, Flash Frontier, Flash Flood Journal, Furtive Dalliance Literary Review, Barren Magazine, The Drabble, Plum Tree Tavern, Café Lit and "a fine line'. She stays awake at night worrying about the current state of politics and whether we will survive climate change.
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