Carolina Ebeid

From the Bystander's Journal

1. Friend––
2. Do you believe that we are forever
3.                             changed by the things we read,
4.                                                         do you think the things we read
5. are changed by what happens
6.                             to us after? Hell
7.                                                         was a song in terza rima.
8. Today makes yesterday
9.                             crueler, another hell—
10.                                                         fire missile gone astray
11. in the densely populated
12.                             neighborhood. Shame on me,
13.                                                         worried for my personal
14. security & for the necessary
15.                             voyeurism of the news.
16.                                                         Virgil blesses
17. those who die before
18.                             their father’s eyes
19.                                                         those who die in front
20. of their wives those who die
21.                             before their homes
22.                                                         in their city’s alleys
23. those who die defending
24.                             resisting who lie
25.                                                         nonetheless defeated.
26. Wives will bring a widow’s grief
27.                             now as their paraphernalia
28.                                                         to second marriages. It blunts
29. the mind. I stand at the water
30.                             front, the sky the sheen of oil
31.                                                         washed rifles.
32. If I could sketch the future
33.                             of persons, I’d make a fire
34.                                                         bombed street, then its first greenness.