The Graybeal-Gowen Prize for Virginia Poets

Green Card

by Jeddie Sophronius

I lay my small head on the stone altar

 

Deportations Come to Campus

 

of citizenship. Each night, I offer

 

Columbia student protester who’s lived in the US
since age 7 sues to stop deportation order

 

a piece of my face until I’m nothing

 

How a Columbia Student Fled to Canada
After ICE Came Looking for Her

 

I do this rite to save my family

 

ICE arrests Palestinian activist who helped lead
Columbia protests, lawyer says

 

from the flood that rises higher each year?

 

Brown University Professor Is Deported
Despite a Judge’s Order

 

The military ordering our deaths

 

Federal Government Detains
International Student at Tufts

 

over and over again? I’m not sure

 

Deported over a speeding ticket?
Dozens of US students’ visas abruptly revoked

 

what or who remains my portion to save

 

300 student visas have been revoked, including detentions at Tufts, Columbia and more

 

My mother is dead, my father wishes

 

ICE Detains Iranian Ph.D. Student in Alabama
and Farmworker Union Leader in Washington

 

to die, my sister is set on her path

 

Cornell student activist chooses to leave US after judge denies
bid to immediately block deportation

 

of self-destruction. I hardly fill

 

A pro-Israel group says it gave US list of protesters
to deport, drawing alarm from students’ supporters

 

my stomach. What little I save, I send

 

Administration argues judge cannot order return of man
mistakenly deported to El Salvador

 

back home. All this uncertainty for what?

 

As President cracks down on immigration,
U.S. citizens are among those snared

 

For what future? Oh look, I’ve lost my tongue

Jeddie Sophronius is the author of the poetry collections Happy Poems & Other Lies (Codhill Press, 2024), Interrogation Records (Gaudy Boy, 2024), Love & Sambal (The Word Works, 2024). The recipient of the 2025 Lambda Literary Award for Bisexual Poetry, their poems appear in The Cincinnati Review, The Iowa Review, Prairie Schooner, and elsewhere.

FROM Volume 75, Number 2

Related