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the redhead’s
a master
of exaggeration
flies to the hairdresser
in a hot air balloon
comments to TV cameras
on her daring attempt
at quick hair loss
with each scissor’s snip
imagines a pain
and blood flowing
thick rich
and red
emerging
from the shop
she flies home
in grief
carrying
a coffin of locks
and nothing
can cheer her
not even
the applause
Wherever we send “peacekeepers”
there is no peace.
Emerging from bombed buildings
men carry body parts in blanket;
an arm of a young man,
the gray head of a grandma,
the leg of a baby,
all jumbled together, cherished,
as if needed bits
for one giant, cannibalistic soup
for starving humanity.
Body entrails drape in trees and clotheslines
where something nourishing and clean should be.
One man carries the body of a headless baby,
his arms outstretched as if offering
the remains to a cruel god.
A look of horror, disgust and disbelief
frozen on his face.
The same look on the faces of the dead
littering the ground. Numb cabbages.
The War, it is said,
Something about holy and God
and man’s sacred rights.
The War, what it is:
A devil’s feast.
Plenty of blood for all to drink.
The eyes of the dead
eternally open.
I sit in our garden,
profuse with yellow tea roses
bursting through railings
attempting to hold them in.
Everywhere flowers bloom
in the comfortable coolness
and gentle breeze.
There is beauty here.
There is love.
I am happy
but there is a stick in my heart.
If I pull it out I will bleed to death.
so I carry the love
and try to live with the stick
and the pain
experiencing it all
simultaneously.
This is the edge to life,
being awake, fully open
and in love
with another human
who is beautiful
buts tells me he is numb.
Belinda Subraman is a hospice nurse living in El Paso. She is the editor of Gypsy Magazine and the owner of Vergin' Press. She has published her poetry extensively both on the page and in audio recording, and her papers are archived at the University of New Mexico in Albuquerque.