PoetryMagazine.com

Julia Stein
USA

Julia Stein has published five books of her own poetry: "Under the Ladder to Heaven" (finalist in Whitman Competition, American Academy of Poets);"Desert Soldiers"; "Shulamith"; "Walker Woman"; and the latest is "What Were They Like?"about civilians in the Iraq War. She has published two books she’s edited: "Walking Through a River of Fire: 100 Years of Triangle Poetry" and "Every Day is an Act of Resistance: Selected Poetry of Carol Tarlen." She is co-writer

on "Shooting Women,"a book of non-fiction on women camerawomen and videographers around the world which will be published in 2015. Stein is also a book editor, arts journalist, and a photographer.

Where Is Mr. Islam? 

Mr. Islam rode off in a rickshaw to go to a wedding.

No one’s seen him for two days. 

Once you could find him at Sahsa Denim factory in Bangladesh

sewing for Nike, Tommy Hilfiger, American Eagle.

A small man with a beard in the huge crowd at shift change where

hundreds thousands poured out of concrete buildings 

Once you could find him at Shasha Denim standing up to the boss,

find him in court where he took his case,

where he won back his salary $30 a month

and lost his job.

Once you could find him studying at the Solidarity Center in Dhaka,

find him in Ashulia, among the factories in his tiny office  crowded

with workers who cried of unpaid wages, bosses who groped women.

He was fearless fighting for them.

Once you could find him with the cop who warned him to stop,
find him in a cell tortured by thugs. The police pressured him to sign a
paper incriminating his co-workers. They threatened to kill his family,
threatened to kill him and then he escaped.

Once you could find in February 40 days walking in the villages

talking to the villagers how to be better Muslims.

find him in March when twelve cops took him away, let him go,

find him in April riding off  on his rickshaw.

Two days later in his home a villager found him in the newspaper

in the photo of a dead man dumped 40 miles from Dhaka in Tangil,

hurried to Mr. Islam’s little concrete home.

His family rushed to Tangil, found his corpse dumped in a pauper’s grave,

the corpse they dug up,

found his knees were smashed, his toes broken.

Now you can find him in grave

in the small dirt backyard behind his home.