Meeting the Map by Debasis Mukhopadhyay

Throw a stone, you die. This time, Jose Rodriguez died exactly at sixteen. Blood flowed like tenderness as roosters cried for qué viva México. The agent who shot him ten times through the border fence claimed he was busy with his right to life. As a matter of fact, it’s no different in Heaven where you claim your innocence and walk free. Only those who are misplaced in the map, chuck it all. It all depends on the pact they make with God to build life or death. There is hope, next time, Rodriguez is allowed to live behind bars for his conviction on stone throwing charges. Or God willing, he won’t have to dig a kid role in the West Bank prison for twenty years. He will rather find himself again at sixteen playing basketball with his friends within the aimed range of US fire. As a matter of fact, what you are reading now is a poem called meeting the map. There is hope, this time, long before the bullet flies across the fence, he can remember he is busy with his own death and is thus free to throw a stone before he dies. Blood will flow like tenderness as it always flows down the map and the roosters can cry for whatever they want.

Each year an average of 700 Palestinian children—most of them accused of throwing stones–are prosecuted in two Israeli military courts operating in the West Bank.

Debasis Mukhopadhyay grew up in Calcutta, India and now lives in Montreal, Canada. He holds a PhD in literary studies from Université Laval. Debasis’ recent work has appeared or is forthcoming in Snapping Twig, Eunoia Review, Yellow Chair Review, With Painted Words, Silver Birch Press, Of/With, Fragments of Chiaroscuro, Down in the Dirt, The Bitchin’ Kitsch, Whale Road Review, and elsewhere. Blog :

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