Enslaved Girl Emerita
by Marco Katz Montiel / August 10th, 2025
A small story
On a small news outlet
Helped a small girl
Reach a small audience
After all, do news junkies
Look at SyriacPress
Or care about Assyrians,
Chaldeans, or Arameans?
How many news junkies
See “Enslaved Girl”
As if it were a title, like
Prof or Poet Laureate?
She was a precocious girl
Titled at the age of nine
And committed
For the next eleven years
Committed to life
And only her God knows
How she saved herself thru
Puberty and adolescence
In the company of men
Who despised her kind
Every minute torture
Over five million minutes
A Women’s Protection Unit,
Heroic Kurdish Women,
Showed that erstwhile girl,
And the world, their power.
Marco Katz Montiel composes poetry and prose in Spanish, English, and musical notes. He went to college late, and then alienated one university by publishing about bigotry on campus and got kicked to the curb by two others for his union activities. Still, Marco managed to graduate and even publish a book on music and literature with Palgrave. His essays, poems, and stories appear in
Ploughshares,
Jerry Jazz Music,
English Studies in Latin America,
Copihue Poetry,
Camino Real,
WestWard Quarterly,
Lowestoft Chronicle,
Dissident Voice, and in the anthologies
Cartas de desamor y otras adicciones,
There’s No Place, and the
Capital City Press Anthology.
Read other articles by Marco Katz, or
visit Marco Katz's website.
This article was posted on Sunday, August 10th, 2025 at 8:00am and is filed under Poetry.
