A Trafficked Girl Sighs

By Romi Jain

 

Silence would break into scream

Like a calm morn pierced with

Flight of cackling geese;

 

The love preserved for beau,

Amidst fantasies of bliss,

Thirsty demons would pollute-- with

Filthy lust, accumulated on tongues lewd;

And no man of repute would ever smell

The touched bloom!

 

The clean bed is no more than sludge

A virgin’s modesty would sink in;

Flies would swarm around, stray pigs rollick--

Satiated lot would leave, throwing pittances

 

A day would come when price of her flesh

She would negotiate,

Feeding with priority the wealthier wolves;

All shame, all fear would finally depart—

An inevitable reconciliation to fate!

 

 

 

 

Romi Jain is a poet from Jaipur, India.

 

 

 

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Empty Eyelids

by Jake Hajer

 

Empty eyelids

Twitch, more sure of death

Than thumbs

 

Peels of skin

Bone powder

Panic matted

Cotton char

And sand muddled

in blood

 

Shoes look so lonely

In the smoke of screams

And burnt hair

 

Those babies scream, too

Crawling to a hopeless start

Dragging little limbs amongst bigger limbs,

stones and teeth

            Who would have had to

            Learn their mother’s name

            Before citing religious

            Justification for her murder

 

Some things are still recognizable

Through expressions of worlds melted as metal

Men broken and fallen

As much as everything;

Of it all

 

If it’s not melted

It’s roasted

If it’s not dead

It was never alive

 

Martyrs die

They don’t kill

 

What’s good

Written from the ink well of so many tears?

Preaching

Practicing damnation

To a country choir

Of sisters

Executing themselves

in the light of

explosive hate

 

 

 

 

Jake Hajer is a poet and an International Relations graduate of the University of Chicago.