Barty

Felicite Lehel ‘26

This is a theoretical mugshot of a character named Barty Beckett. As a zombie punk in a human world, he faces against the worst evil of them all: conformity.

To the boys who burn the soil at their feet

with rough, dust-bitten hands

clenching gallons of gasoline,

you drown streets in scorching flames-

thick, burning rubber slices the air into fragments of grey smog

across the land you once played on.

The very same streets,

where your brothers kicked makeshift soccer balls across gravel,

are now littered with the mangled bodies of neighbors,

their limp hands bent underneath blazing truck tires,

still outstretched towards an absent God.

To the boys who brandish guns like armor,

ripping women who could be their mothers

from blockaded cars, barrels pressed between their soft shoulder blades

as you repeat orders over their sobs:

Do you feel safer?

as you take your own people hostage, 

emptying pockets you know can only hold so much.

Starving, beating, destroying those who look just like you,

who have struggled just like you.

Do you feel stronger?

under the name of savage gang leaders,

who jumped at the opening of power

left by a murdered president.

You cheered at the death of corruption,

but turned around and knelt to a greater hell.

Do you think about your grandmother?

As you tear down churches brick by brick,

spilling holy water on boiling cement,

letting the deathly sun's rays lick it dry.

Do you think about your sister?

as you rip bullet holes through country school walls-

the same ones you attended once, maybe even just a year ago.

Do you think about your younger self?

as you pull the thick black mask from your face, 

wipe the sweat from dark skin,

glistening underneath the same sky where you once prayed.

To the boys 

who would rather tear through what remains of their broken homeland

with rust-stained machetes

than risk another day empty-bellied:

What does it feel like?

to forever massacre that which birthed you,

in search of a power

you will never find. 

Kiara Benoit ‘26

Given the current status of Haiti as a country overtaken by gang violence, I wanted to touch on the fact that a lot of the people serving the gang leaders are young boys- boys who grew up in a country that they are now helping destroy. Being Haitian myself, I wanted to write about what is going on right now in a form that allows me to speak directly to those boys, which is what inspired the format of this poem.