Who Bows To Honor This Ordinary Woman? Poem by J. Barrett Wolf

A woman returns to what is left of her house…
She bears a mark
On the tip of one finger…

She has been cupped in madness’ hand
An exotic spice stirred into an apocalypse brew
Remembering the eyes of her sister-in-law
who burst past the checkpoint
disappearing in that long, long second
when the C-4 borne across her chest like
swaddled baby became the quick, hot wind
of the four horsemen.

She bears a mark
On the tip of one finger…

She has beheld madness hand
saluting generations forlornly laying down lives
To rout one invader after another
From the arid place that is home.

She has risen above the epitaphs of family
The whining song of the sniper’s bullet
The truncheon truth of religious police
The mortar rounds random cataclysm
The ages of bare feet and pregnancy
The lack of formal education
The claustrophobic concealment of the burka
The harsh weight of barren promises

The desecration
The desperation

She bears a mark
On the tip of one finger…

She has stood up to all these things
Still more undreamed-of agonies.


And she walked dangerous miles
Risking everything
Anointing her finger with indelible blue ink
Placing that mark, her seal, on this, the fruit
For which she has held so firmly to the skein of life.
All her suffering, justified
As she returns to what is left of her home.

She bears the mark
On the tip of one finger…

She has cast her vote.