by Wendy Babiak
The moon rises above the white pines out back,
back-lighting the wind-driven clouds. What
does it even matter what phase it is? New or full,
crescent or gibbous, the bombs fall on Gaza.
A mother drags her two smallest in their
car seats, ropes looped through handles, along
a pocked and rubble-lined road. They’re a tiny part
of a crowd in an exhausted march to the south.
Her babies’ eyes stay shut in an uneasy sleep.
In two weeks bombs
will rain heavier than ever,
in the south, where they’d
been told to flee.
Strange darkness, the shadows cast by our desires.
We pull on the strings attached to our wrists
hard enough and the whole house of cards
could tumble, the puppeteers exposed. (Hey Siri:
What is the petrodollar?) Shame shame shame
shame: that as long as we’re comfy we
don’t mind stealing from the darkies, from the land,
from the future.
The internet
won’t tell us
who bought the justices
who decided
Citizens United.
In the time it takes to get that venti vanilla latte
another child dies, crushed and torn, clutched
by someone who loved them. We walk downstairs
to prepare breakfast; another young life snuffed.
We let out the dog; a little girl’s guts spill out
onto the floor, hit by a bomb designed to slice.
We fill the dishwasher; a little boy’s face melts off,
pocked by white phosphorus supplied by us.
We
are beyond
weeping.
In the time it takes to fold a load of laundry:
another child to be mourned. Murdered
murdered murdered murdered. This mania
for the blood of the hated Other
must be some kind of mind virus.
What is the cure: It’s love.
It’s nothing but love.
But love can’t stop the bombs
from crashing down, won’t stop
the spread of cholera, won’t fill
a single starving person’s belly.
The color of the sky
now lands somewhere
between cloud and fury.
Wendy Babiak (CONSPIRACY OF LEAVES, 2010, Plain View Press) is part of the Irish, Mohawk, and Potawatomi diasporas. Two spirit, they use both singular and plural first person pronouns and is happy to be referred to as either “she” or “they.” Ensconced in upstate New York with their brilliant caretaker, chef, patron, and husband of over 30 years, they do their best to leverage the incredible privilege of freedom of expression they enjoy to write poems that don’t look away from imperialist horrors or pander to the overculture or the corporatocracy. They are at work on a counter-narrative memoir, GRIEFSTRUCK.
Leave a Reply