Carmen Sandiego Reacts to the Travel Ban by Mehrnoosh Torbatnejad

BY MEHRNOOSH TORBATNEJAD

Carmen Sandiego Reacts to the Travel Ban

No different than how she has always traveled,
knows to make a human less human

you call them by a thing that doesn't exist, so
she’s never in a space long enough to be deemed alien;

makes a game from the escape—
the elegant taunting of claiming your city her name

though elsewhere she was born; a turf intruder
with no passport, why apply for one if possession

only calcifies borders, if papers are the breadcrumb
trail always to capture; so instead she enters with the tip

of her color shadow, loots your country of everything
she doesn’t need; see, this is not about thievery,

this is the joy of reclaiming, the thrill of ripping smiles
from paintings, pocketing the heat from flames,

keys and music notes, what good is a native’s job
when you can take the recipes and controls;

you would think she, like the rest, was a holy grail,
the way patrollers lust after her with handcuffs and rope

when she retreats, off to Afghanistan or Iran, Mexico
and Morocco; tell me which one of you would even

reach for a map if it weren’t to chase her,
which one of you would mark a globe if not for the names

of do-not-fly lists; she knew long ago the rights
you inscribed do not include her, that immunity

is a delusion, so she alters her tone when you tap
her telephones, and gloats elusive when she doesn’t sound

metal detectors; so, call her villain, call her enemy
when this body is the one you cannot occupy;

call her criminal, call her spy, call her mastermind
when she outwits your agencies, and know

we are willing to forgive her felonies, knowing
what you call illegal is the act of fleeing an oppressor,

knowing what you call most wanted
is a pseudonym for unwanted;

so, a runaway sneering at despots for hobby
is the reprisal the rest of us have waited for,

so we marvel at the abduction of headwaters,
let her take the rivers, the ceilings and columns,

let her steal everything beneath the wide brim
of what was taken and renamed;

we pardon her; we know what it’s like
to hide but leave a trickling trace of what’s been sown,

we know the blood that she bleeds, she makes sure
to wear visible neck to toe like a trench coat

---

Mehrnoosh Torbatnejad was born and raised in New York. Her poetry has appeared in The Missing Slate, Passages North, HEArt Journal Online, Pinch Journal, and is forthcoming in Painted Bride Quarterly. She is the poetry editor for Noble / Gas Qtrly, and a Best of the Net, Pushchart Prize, and Best New Poets nominee. She currently lives in New York where she practices matrimonial law.

Poetry by Valorie K. Ruiz

BY VALORIE K. RUIZ

Tracing the Path of the Moon

An owl’s wingspan can stretch up to five feet.
When I see the streak of tierra
over the park across the street
at just past midnight
I don’t question it.

But as the minutes
slide into grains of sand
and the cigarette caves to ash
I begin to wonder.
Maybe I’m reading too much
in the shadows between the trees
maybe age is stealing sight from my eyes
maybe it’s all tricks played by amber lights.

The cigarette tames me, keeping me outdoors long
enough for the shadow to return.
A five-foot-wide paint stroke along the sky
traces circles over my head.

When I hear the final hoot as the owl
dances beneath a hidden moon
I laugh.
There’s no need to question.
This message clear as the constellations I craft stories for.
All of these obsidian glimpsed futures are waiting
for nothing more than the illusion of time to bring them full circle.

Fluorescence

Your eyelids flicker and I watch you lift, drift
on a sea carved by the corners of your mind.

The hum of your breath buzzes into a lantern,
a lit firefly flashing it’s gleam

against your parted smile. These new moon nights
I’m tempted to trap the floating radiance

in a jar carved from lightning by pixie hands. I think,
perhaps I could drape it around my neck, wear your fire

as a beam to navigate my way across thunderclap waves:
a storm raging nowhere but the waters

of my own mind. Instead I’m locked in the charm of its hover.
I’d much rather trace the spirals of your floating Sun.

Watch the firefly that needs no external light.


Remedy for Codepency

/the first time i orgasmed/ with you my stained glass eyes shattered/ beneath your sol-bright gaze/ breaking me into a puddle/ of mosaic geometrics unable to be puzzle-pieced/ back into the mural i resiliently crafted/ i spilled honey/ luring the residents of the anthill beyond the swell of your home/ begging the Mother Queen with her millions of eggs/ to gift me her unborn/ swallowing their potential/ anendorfic treatment to remove this lovesickness/ this oxytocin bond/ sometimes too much/

Primitive Wings

The dragonfly enters my room
Glass wings prism moonlight
Across my eyes and I’m shifting between
Recognition and the unknown of his flutter

The dragonfly whispers orders to remain still
He is the snake doctor who’ll stitch together
My endings to each new beginning
I am a rag muñeca waiting to be quilted together

The dragonfly is holed away in my mind
Lodged in the corners where he breathes
Fires to keep himself warm
Where he lives still—
Flapping memories into blank pages

---

Valorie K. Ruiz is a Xicana writer fascinated by language and the magic it evokes. She currently

lives in San Diego, and she is assistant flash fiction editor for Homology Lit.