all that we love ~ in black, white & gray
I have a new poem out in Borderlands, Texas Poetry Review. I wrote this in honor of Picasso and his painting Guernica which he created in response to the Nazi’s bombing of the Basque town of the same name during the Spanish Civil War. In black and white it is his expression of the horror of war, racism and the slaughter of innocents. I wondered what my response to the terror and horror of violence in our present world should be. This poem grew out of that. ❤💔 all that we love ~ in black, white, gray.
in 1937, nazis, thread
death through an eye of a needle,
stitch shrouds made of long
legged girls, mothers like rivers
devoured, in the heat of a spanish sun.
bombs rain down, where a garden used to grow lavender.
in a sea of red, ants, babies,
floating, swimming towards salvation one palm at a time.
in a courtyard paris, picasso mourns
an ocean, lost,
smears grief on canvas like a scream
for 35 days, he weeps, black, white, grays. & now “guerinica” lies dormant
in the museo reina sofia madrid,
racism, treason, the politics of hate,
blast their way out
of a birth canal, scorched earth trails
behind & in the heat of a new summer, fires. families crumble,
children rage against mothers & the poets are left
weeping black, white, grays.
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