Talking Politics In Syria Poem by Seif-Eldeine O

Brother of bombs and running water
in the seized apartment complexes,
you reflect the scarred faces which
emerge from the water like a Baptism. Outside
the lit-up crosses and arches of the Churches,
the Christians pray for the President,
afraid of what a Sunni government might do.
Inside the bathhouses, water turns to steam.
We wash the bodies war has weathered.
Suds sting open wounds. Our anger,
like those suds, bubbles up. COVID 19
shuts down the bathhouses, restaurants and bars.
My mother washes the sweat and blood
from my brother's fatigues. He's fighting
for the President. He and I argue politics,
a word whose final syllable ticks, ticks like a gun
out of bullets.

originally published in The Massachusetts Review