behind a glass display
thousands of children's shoes
a mountainous heap
scuffed and tattered and browned with age
shoes, thousands
ripped from lifeless little feet
left to rot in a godless place
to know is one thing
to see is to weep
to see is to snot and sniff
long after leaving the barracks
and trying to keep track of the tour guide
your sole comfort is
seeing others weep too
nearly eighty years have passed
Never Again
we vowed
Never Again
one side of the coin said
Never Again
the other side parroted
then resuscitated a dead tongue
and set ancient olive groves ablaze
in a land where hands clutch rocks
because to wield anything more
is to be labelled a terrorist
nearly eighty years
of watching an endlösung in a bedazzled coat
and calling it a conflict
three hundred and sixty-five days
of white phosphorus and severed limbs
tent tarps fused with flesh
plastic bags with what remains
of families
hollowed-out baby skulls
tiny fingers cradling dead cats
bombed schools
bombed bakeries
bombed ambulances
more wide-eyed watching
and more looking away
in january
thousands of children's shoes
were placed on dam square
ten thousand shoes
one for each child
murdered in the world's largest open-air prison
since october seventh
I wonder—
if fewer than ten thousand
survived the godless place
what are the odds
a soldier, a descendant
carried their scars into the new century
only to inflict the same wounds
on those who survived the dam shoes
does the soldier believe
Never Again
only counts
in retrospect?
YOU ARE READING
Blood Orange Periphery
PoetryMy suicide had been two years in the making when I decided not to follow through at the last minute. Over the past decade, I've written poems, books, short stories, fanfiction and hundreds of thousands of words, but nothing felt complete. This coll...
