DISQUIET OVER DISTANT MURDER

by Indran Amirthanayagam 

See also CFR reporting by Will Freeman

This disquiet, queasy floating gut, 

comes from wondering why 

an unmarked, unregistered 

plane lands in a military strip 

of an Ecuadorian airport, 

with an unknown number 

of crew members, takes off 

then drops drones 

on a fishing boat near 

the Galapagos, killing 

several fishermen, sinking 

the boat, then capturing 

survivors who are flown 

to El Salvador and treated 

there as shipwreck victims.

Whose ship is wrecked? 

Who turned good evil, 

night day, justice execution? 

Orwell? Or is this the new 

every day in these 

United States which 

dispatched the plane 

that sentenced 

the fishermen 

to float in the sea 

until rescued by the same 

crew that set off 

the drones that punched 

their ship into

the deep.

Indran Amirthanayagam writes a Substack. He has just published Isla itinerante ( Editorial Apogeo, Peru, 2025) and White Space Sonnets ( Sarasavi publishers, Sri Lanka, 2025). His other publications include El bosque de deleites fratricidas ( RIL Editores), Seer (Hanging Loose Press),The Runner's Almanac (Spuyten Duyvil), Powèt Nan Pò A: Poet of the Port (Mad Hat), and Ten Thousand Steps Against the Tyrant (Broadstone Books). He is the translator of Kenia Cano’s Animal For The Eyes (Dialogos Books) and Origami: Selected Poems of Manuel Ulacia (Dialogos Books). He edits The Beltway Poetry Quarterly, hosts the Poetry Channel on YouTube, and publishes poetry books with Sara Cahill Marron at Beltway Editions.

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