By Will Kirkland, 2004
It is hard to make small talk today.
Everything is so huge.
A child has died in Falluja.
A bullet wound the size of brains
has taken him. His mother now prepares
for thirty years of grief, a euphemism
for what her womb will bear, a memory
of what she saw: infanticide by error. The sniper wipes
his burning eye and prays to find
through dust and fear another, better enemy,
swears to christ he will not die
in god’s forsaken alley, squeezing
off another round, another and
another.
Until the infant’s uncle
detonates himself, and him,
to find their separate heavens.
These are all the things I see.
The words descend through space,
Like birds
on bullet shredded wings;
struggle to be lifted
against the roaring air
exhale and fail. Such tiny, unremembered deaths
in the human scheme of things.
Don’t talk to me. For just another second;
Give my soul its mourning moment
to pack another coffin home.
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Now I, along with all of you, can go,
taken each with our own pain:
A broken toy, a phone call missed;
A headache in the evening.
We talk of little else:
The rising price of gasoline;
How hot it is –too hot to shop,
the pinching shoes.
Are the vegetables organic?
Will the Red Sox lose?
Conversations in the wind,
the words, the wingless birds, the
body parts, come down like rain
a drip, a crawl upon my skin.
Questions of tomorrow come
Drop like ashes on the drums.
Who will pick the children up?
Who will who when what the how if?
Laughter slaps, then slips
and ricochets away.
The goldfinch in the garden
drops a seed, a shadow shimmers overhead,
Goldfinch gone but first it keens.
And we?
Only whistling in the wind…
Will Kirkland
2004