rounds of hate in scores fired
enter my body as i watch
eight fall,
six of them who look like me —
and what can i do but scream silently
from thousands of miles away?
fleetingly she glimpsed by ---
a backyard hummingbird fluttering,
feeding her hatchlings:
spiny, naked little things,
blind and squirmy,
perilously craning,
that grew feathers and left
This submission won second place in the Synapse Storytelling Contest creative writing category.
Child, I
lay him supine upon the funereal table
viburnum-skinned, blent