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Bio:

Irène Mathieu is a writer and aspiring physician/human rights advocate/global health policy-maker/community organizer from Virginia. She currently attends Vanderbilt University School of Medicine. Previous publications include writings in The Lindenwood Review, The Caribbean Writer, Muzzle Magazine, Damselfly Press, Magnapoets, 34th Parallel, and Haven Magazine. She was a finalist in the Jane’s Press Stories Foundation’s 2010 poetry contest, and her photography and a painting have also appeared in print, in 34th Parallel, The Meadowland Review, and Hinchas de Poesía.

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it’s twelve in the morningof the tenth eleventhsince it happened.september, that is.the breaking, I’m speaking.I mean the mountains,when they dissolved intodusty shadows at our feet,powdered into lungs likethe fog of bone sand inthe air in a place the worldwould have otherwiseforgotten. it used to be quietin our valley,just the granddaughters growingtheir small curls, and thegrandfathers growing old withthe smoke of pipes and stories.I mean the windows,when they hemorrhaged,bodies like blood cellsflowing onto the sidewalk,the city in screams,the big apple cored. it used tobe proud in our city, God bless,but fear has crept among us,lies on its flat belly beneaththe subways and hisses,sends its spawn streamingto all counties in our country.we used to talk about themelting pot, but now we nevermention the cauldron inwhich we are slowly boiling.I mean the fig trees,the fire trucks, the orphans,the droughts, the body bags,the bomb-scarred walls,the ashes, the incantations,the wails, the vows,the grit, the shrapnel,the questions, the infernos,the boots, the burkas,the machine guns, the blankets,the goats, the flags,the mothers, the winds,the granddaughters,the grandfathers,the smoke,the stories.it’s the tenth eleventh at twelve.the memory in deathasks us to livebetter.God willing,the eleventh eleventhwill be a less brokenseptember.there is freedom even inoppressive cigarette smoke.in this part of Europe they tossashes like laughs;powder keg suspended inan Adriatic embrace.the time is taut;their faces drawn.the call to prayerechoes from minaretsand it sets her wings alight;but those lips behind their cloudsof smoke draw in, feverish,hear the bombs again.cry the mosques,and she agrees, but herprice for this magic was anairline ticket; they paid inSrebrenica bombs.his deepest fear was stagnation,un-that can capture onlya Haitian born a mountain range awayfrom Port-au-Prince, Dominicanpooling everywhere but inthe barracks ofso for fear he exchanged lunchesfor bus trips to Santo Domingo,where he could certify belongingwith a passport, a ticket to motionand permission to stay in theonly place he’d ever been.what do you offer at checkpoints,outstretch with trembling hands likeone of five daily prayers tomachines guns that make a steel fence?some passports are etched inGazan gazes, refusals to blink,or the cuneiform on weathered palmslike Rosetta stones of veins and skin.where I live border control meansbrown control: keep the dark-eyed out,the babies bred into cartels and theAztecs’ ancestors who still live underthe Cortes curse confined to Ciudad Juarez,where women are becoming anendangered species. if the brown make itpast marble-eyed khakis and are caughtdriving, shopping, loving, or learning,ask them for a passport. if they don’tspeak English, handcuff them –that’s border control.(author retains copyright)