Marionettes
by Steve Klepetar
“I am trapped on a desert of raw gunshot wounds”
Audre Lorde
Somewhere there are dead children whose bodies
swim in their own blood, whose faces have been
eradicated, whose mouths are nothing
but wounds and there are hands with black gloves
holding guns, there are voices shouting about insults
there is a man holding forth, a man shooting a target
until it splinters like a broken land
there is rage and sorrow which fogs the air
night has become a cloud of sorrow and rage
and when the cameras go off, then suffering begins
in a new silence that drowns every word you could say
or dream, that threatens mothers with madness
fathers with a silence terrible as the deep, heavy pit
where torn bodies are laid again and again, mangled
a broken pile of marionettes, limbs tangled in awful sleep
Gyroscope Review 50
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