Rwanda
A jagged bone-end juts
from a rain-scoured hillside,
drips its essence onto rich red earth,
a rivulet winding
to a stream, then a larger stream
into the Kagera river,
which once ran red
and choked with bodies,
surging, dumping into Lake Victoria,
northward up the White Nile
across great salt plains
where evaporation ascends
into jetstream clouds
over skeletal waves of refugees
rippling the landscape.
I wake under a dark flow
before the alarm, wander
down into the hard contours
of the kitchen, brew coffee.
Two hours later, kids
tumble in, warm and gangly
over cereal and permission slips.
On the drive to school
their chatter covers
the radio cadence,
another sordid news cycle.
We arrive, they bounce
from the car, ricochet
off clusters of friends
and are gone.
What if next, all of us:
parents, teachers,
children, passers-by
are arbitrarily herded
into classrooms
hacked up
then forgotten
over years,
until all that remains
are carpet stains
under twisted tents
of ribcage, pelvis,
dried cloth.
A greasy raindrop
spatters the windshield
as I shudder the clutch,
accelerate into
another uneventful day.
–> “Rwanda” first appeared in Hare’s Paw Literary Journal (September 2021)
Rumors
freeze thaw freeze thaw
earth is soft and tired of
erratic cycles haunting
the sleep that evaded
you in the night images
of warring unrest hacking
through the dark how do
you contain suffering you
have never known yourself
just witnessed in passing
diffusing like snowmelt
into another daybreak
what’s the forecast who
is listening and then who
gets to define tomorrow
—2/23/2022
Ukraine: (w)ars poetica
Because frozen earth can shatter like glass.
Because a marsh laced with isotopes.
Because a cordite whiff lingers for generations.
Because small-arms stutter.
Because calculations.
Because Hunger and Power are unstable denominators.
Because Family and Famine are two keystrokes apart.
Because mother.
Because geography.
Because wheatfields withheld.
Because wealth can be tallied in electrons, but conscience can’t.
Because skeletal remains.
Because potatoes have eyes.
Because we have four-chambered hearts, and only two echo the moon.
Riddled with Arrows 5.2: “Spotlight 2022”
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