NEW FEATHERS ANTHOLOGY
  • Home
  • Current Issue
  • Issues
  • About
  • Submit
  • New Feathers Award
  • Donate
  • Bookshop
  • Thanks
Previous
Next
Picture
Nadiia Rom, Wild Field
Details
Carolyn Martin
 
Even in conflict zones, people keep on living.
–Anastasia Taylor-Lind, “Stories from the Road,” 
    National Geographic, August 2021
 
 
How? I want to know when gun shots mute birdsong
and shattered limbs can’t bear a rake or spoon or pen.
When women hold their dead in blood-soaked arms
and numb-eyed kids stare at empty bowls. How? 
Like the Peshmerga guard in Iraqi Kurdistan.
She smooths out her cot, brushes her teeth, combs 
her black-brown hair–uncovering scars across
her high forehead­­­. Scrambling into her uniform,
she grabs her Kalashnikov to patrol miles
of hidden predators waiting for their turn. 
Like the friend in Michigan: her husband out of work. 
She tucks Lunchables in her son’s backpack, 
buttons his yellow raincoat, waits at the school bus stop.
Her day: a spreadsheet of doables. An 8-hour stint
at Food4Less. A car needing gas. Prayers
her husband will get out of bed before their bank 
account drowns beneath past-due bills and alcohol.
Like my mother in a nursing home. Her light blue eyes 
can’t comprehend the black space on a chest x-ray. 
Tumor? Cardio-event? The doctor won’t assume.
She spends sunny afternoons breathing in clouds
sliding through chestnuts and oaks, waiting 
to wend her way home. She’s agreed to any time,
any road, any zone. She cannot say how or when.
Previous
Next
Tweet
Share
  • Home
  • Current Issue
  • Issues
  • About
  • Submit
  • New Feathers Award
  • Donate
  • Bookshop
  • Thanks