HOMES BLOWN APART

by | Oct 15, 2019 | Issue Eleven, Poetry

The roof took off long ago.

So did the south wall.

Doctors in muddy white

pace and shiver.

Nobody starts a fire

from wood in the rubble.

The tallest guy stalks about

with a quivering stick,

dowsing for a buried trickle

of fresh water.

Only weeds bubble

from cracked concrete.

Wind really wouldn’t mind wailing.

It remembers Indian girls

sawing off fat braids

for dead braves

stuck in bleaching bones.

But there’s not enough air.

It just has to keep on sighing.

Hands in gritty pockets,

a doctor faces south.

In the black hunger,

his grandmother peddled icons

made without hands.

It was no help.

She still ate mud and drank piss

in homes blown apart like tepees in a twister.

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