Tag: children - Wrath-Bearing Tree

The Mudweary Bringing / image by Amalie Flynn

The President’s New Children’s Crusade

We are the mudweary
bringing the blossoms of death.
We are the Contras, the blessed,
liberty’s torching lames us,
we are the old children.
shredding night’s humid serenity.
bombs unleashed are our laughter.
we are the young men of war.

We are the death marchers
who slink through the mountain,
one endless serpent of soldiers
sent to strangle our enemies;
The president sends us
with his blessing, blesses us
with his sending, blesses
the bleeding.

There is no need for interceding,
for the Sandinistas
are infidels wrapped in red,
red in their wrapping;
rapping on doors in the night.
Contras are the bringers of light
rapoing indoors when we might,
we bring the light to the burning,
always discerning the right,
the right. After the bellies
are emptied of babies,
after the buildings are belching,
their flames springing higher
we scatter, no matter the plunder,
the thunder roars through the dark,
the spark of freedom is lighted,
ignited.

We are innocents marching,
we are the crusaders of death,
new life we bring our nation,
new breath, new salvation our message.
We have the president’s blessing
he sends us the blessing of rending,
his blessing is drowned
in the bleeding.

CARE STONES CRUNCHED / *image by Amalie Flynn*

Dear Melissa

On the walk back from the d-fac
in Kandahar I almost peed in my uniform
pants a long way from home
we were laughing uncontrollably like other
things we could no longer control
having birthed two children each and left
them in someone else’s competent care.

Incontinent overseas
on a mother of a mission drilling
cavities filling them with a matronly
patriotic responsibility for health care
stones crunched beneath our boots
we stopped and bent over shifting
weapons we carried on our hips like kids.

We almost cried in the dark after dinner
absent from bedtimes reading
The Giving Tree aloud, sent
voice recordings stateside for storytime
my son and daughter heard
me reading, heard I love you
no laughing though.

Remember how tough we had to be
for babies to sit on our bladders for nine
months only to leave them four years later
promising to return once our tour of the war
was over we were bent on becoming militant
mothers chuckling again with our children
thank you for finding life funny on the way back.

New Poetry by Douglas G. Campbell: “The President’s New Children’s Crusade”

New Poetry by Abena Ntoso: “Dear Melissa”