Veronica Haunani Fitzhugh
I.
The furious whirling rainbows of dance
end with the first shot but are incomplete.
Mama. Mama!
She does not hear the booms of what she
cannot know as gun fire.
She yelps thrusting her arms out and
away hoping to grab hold. She finds nothing and no one.
Her new being splits her bud lips into
soundless, mouthed wailing.
Her new lessons stretch her taut.
As she is about to tear, she is lifted
and held close to a new back.
She lays her fevered cheek against the
rough, pink shawls of another.
A stranger, an elder from another
tribe.
Her dark, long hair smells of the smoke
of an unknown fire, of another stripped bare.
She closes her eyes with brown fingers
laced in her new woman.
II.
Mama. Mama!
Who are they?
They are the end.
Mama. Mama!
What are you doing?
Making marriage soup to save...
What is save?
Allowing your tomorrows to come and go.
What are these?
Tears, my love, tears.
When will they end?
As you open your mouth and sip the
soup.
They barge in, again breaking her bowl.
The blood earns title to the soil. No purpose left.
The dry land drinks the mixing soup of
sobs and veins and dies in its thirst for more.
III.
Their ghosts shadow a scar across the
cheeks of a new people.
Creating other bowls filled with broth
where bitter meets sweet.
Moving but are not lost.
Stopping pipelines.
Mama. Mama!
What is that?
The dance continues.
Veronica Haunani Fitzhugh earned her BA in English Literature from the University of Virginia but is more proud of the friendships she earned through her social justice work in Charlottesville, Virginia. She has been in several anthologies online and in print. Her main blog is Charlottesville Winter at cvillewinter.wordpress.org.
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