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(a.m.) the city
was split by lightning,
stripped down to bone, and tortured,
its flesh lashed by flames…
suddenly
I was beggared,
wearing the rags of loose skin,
hanging like pockets lined with blood.
I could not see
the earth's incinerator,
its volcanic madness, blinded by hair,
burnt darker than matchsticks
and dusted with soot,
but I could feel
the meltdown in my fingers
like soft beeswax, clasping each other
as though desperate lovers—
lovers in torment,
gnarled in the arms of war.
I had crawled
from among the dying,
the children curled like fetuses
in their mother's wombs, the unborn;
crawled from under the black rain
of suffering, the ill-smell of survival;
a disfigured hope
seen clutching the red-and-white hibiscus
from my mother's kimono
that became part of my flesh.
(Note: 8: 15 a.m., the time on August 6,1945 that the atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima.)
Joanne Monte
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Read poems about / on: mother, city, war, children, rain, hair, red, hope, child
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