Vincent Poetry Prize Honorable Mention
Joyce Schmid
Condemned to Repeat
“Now lies he here, his wild blood scalding the snow.”
–Edna Saint Vincent Milay, “ The Buck in the Snow”
Someone designed a chute for cattle, curved,
to make the animals believe they’re going home.
And so they are, though not the way they think,
their leathery backs in motion towards an artificial light.
High walls and silence hide the stunner
waiting for their brain.
My family was herded on a cattle train.
Now men are herded to El Salvador
bent over to the ground like cattle, stripped,
and kneeling to be shorn.
A mother spots her son: It’s him! It’s him!
_____
Note: The line “It’s him! It’s him” is from “‘It's him, it's him!' – is from “Mother spots son deported from US in mega-prison footage”, by Nicole Kolster and Gustavo Ocando Alex, BBC Mundo in Venezuela and Bernd Debusmann Jr, BBC News, Washington DC , March 19, 2025.
