A child
squats in the ash
listlessly fingering circles
Watching
Balancing on toes dug into the dust
Circle over circle Circle over circle Circle Over … Over …
Watching
his fathers falter
among the ruins
Beseeching the deaf stones for hope Balancing on toes …
Circle over circle
She sees
her brothers
drowned in manhood,
to devour the fathers’ rage.
Brothers vomiting stones heavenward.
Circle over circle
she watches . Silence watches. Watches
the mothers’ shadow
unflinching cast over her shoulders
numb to its woe Balancing on toes lost in the dust …
And the wind exhales
casting the earth into eyes of the child blinded by shields of furious locks
… and he stays, she stays
Unflinching
Toes digging into the unforgiving
They stay. Circling in the rain. They stay.
The children stay to see what comes.
Save for the insatiable appetite children have for discovery, our species, as your subtext suggests, that the circular mode of discovering is also the vortex of so many unauthentic persons that get caught up in this rotary syndrome and never escape. Enjoyed this read. Thank you for posting.
First Edition Translation of Teselas by Carmen Crespo X111 César Simón Poetry Prixe 2016 Translated from Spanish by Robin Ouzman Hislop and Amparo Arrospíde
A further collection of poems, many from years in the Middle East, but also the California San Francisco and Central Coast areas (Santa Cruz, Carmel, Big Sur, Berkeley, etc.).
Contraband Marriage, traveling along the hemline of loving after incarceration, is a love story written in lyric and free form, set in reality with a different ever after.