August 10, 2014Picture of Girl and Small Boy (Burij, Gaza)
I would like to tell her not to wear such flimsy shoes,
that rubble contains the whole spectrum of knowable
and unknowable dangers: sheets of metal, ripped
to knife’s edge, live wires, bloated arms still reaching
for light. Her hair, scraped back into a ponytail,
is open to sky; remnants of buildings filter down
one concrete chunk at a time, and the midday bells
of rockets ring out above her. She carries a boy
on her still-narrow hips, his legs entwined around
her life-jacket-yellow dungarees. Like a rodeo rider,
his left arm grips her shoulder to steady himself, or her,
while torso recoils back and away; his body is asking
to slow down, to turn back. Instead, her eyes comb
the ground for a next step, fingers of her free hand
curled into a claw, as if to frighten off whatever
is coming, what she somehow knows is ahead.
from Poets Respond