Anti-War Trilogy

 By

 Christina Pacosz

In the Garden

        “In Baquba a woman and her four children were killed when a bomb went off in a

         neighbor’s house bringing the ceiling down on the family sleeping in the garden.”

A hot house in Baquba

Only a week after Zarqawi is killed

The stars shining like lanterns

In the night sky

Jasmine scents the air

Figs and tomatoes ripen

In the warm dark

Here in this country I am even now trying to reach this family

A woman and her four children 

Buried under bricks and debris

From the ceiling of the bombed-out neighbor’s house

It is too late to rescue them

Too late when they closed their eyes to sleep

On pallets near the cucumber and chard

And died

June 21, 2006

Summer is Fraying

Squirrel nests are falling down

Fourth of July has been here and gone

Summer is waning

Though swallows still chortle as they dance

through the air

And robins strut on stunted lawns

The drought drags on

Squirrels pair off

On the back porch rail

To groom each other

Before their rut

It is the season

Though summer is fraying

My thoughts stray to her, to him

Each of those four gone, gone

The family pentacle broken now

Leaving me alone

On the lone prairie

Too exhausted to howl at the moon

And the war drags on

The bloody war drags on

And spreads

Around the world

Like an awful fleet of ships

A terrible wind filling their sails

July 7, 2006

Unspeakable

In Fallujah

a family buries

their nine-year old son

in the garden

among the eggplant

and sweet pepper

Shrapnel in his stomach

The U.S. Marine patrol

on the other side

of the clay wall

A bright red cascade

of bougainvillea

Here a raucous crow

in the silk tree

calls and from up the bluff

first one then another

answers

A murder of crows

black beads

of an avian rosary

Until the last

audible crow

raises its voice

and all sound dies

November, 2004