It’s been forty years of debris
turning stale, and submunitions
still hunt inside the patina of my mud.
I’m stumbling with ankles steeped
in my little wrecked chimneys.
A foot wedged inside a sandal.
Te bandage wraps my chest and I
sense the new branches of a cypress
within me, waiting to tear open
the gauze. Where are the high verandas
that once guarded elephants.
What ends the deepening numbers,
resounding into night, a planeload
releases every eight minutes forever.
Left only with cistern walls dismantled
in this era of widows, this is no way
to be lived, clawed and de-veined by
steel splinters concealed. Te ground
knows more than a child will ever.
No way to seal the gaps, when a smuggled
climate spills over my body, taints me
with cobwebs spun from overseas.
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