The Stench
Full on the genocidaires are_____fully evacuating
the people_____ they’ve been evacuating
for months_____the carousel
without roof_____ or shadow_____ or saddled
magical creatures______ and just hours ago
the soldiers_____ shot a hungry horse in the head
_____watched it convulse
while hitched to the cart it pulls
in front of the house
_____“the guards laughing”
_____ the people on foot
with fewer belongings than the last time
_____to nowhere somewhere nearby
wounded_____ divergent
“so the hangman comes_____ to all dinners.”
And now and then your favourite shirt comes around
as you leave your favourite shoe pair behind
_____“and now and then a white elephant”
______ a parrot_______ the people are free
to stay_____ free___ to return____ what it takes
to hoist a horse_____ issuing laws on how to bury it.
____How many of your corpses
____have you not washed?
And now and then sea water doesn’t sting the dead.
And now and then pounds of flesh per cerement.
The horse’s stench or sniper fire:
____the window, the door, the road.
[…]
I won’t live to see the manufacturers of eternity
become the dust they deserve.
The dust that feeds the great rivers as atoning diatoms.
Here I am in an evil place full of love,
I or the place receive the mystery.
Art credit: Jumana Emil Abboud, A Happy Ending part II: Two Skins, 2015, Pencil, gouache and pastel on paper. See more of her work here.
