Burials
Gary Blankenship (USA)
today another came home to be buried
as the day before
and the day before that
and before
and before
105
for the 90 days since victory was declared
and another will come tomorrow
and the next tomorrow
and the next
and the next
an average of better than one a day
until
October 11
equals the number
destroyed homegrown at
Oklahoma City
*
one hundred and five
is not a big number
even written out in text
smaller than the traffic deaths per year
crack babies
crib deaths
broken battered skulls
than the three thousand and thirty one known at
911
(to
be reached in 2011
not
an election year)
infinitesimal besides African civil wars
Aids
religious slayings from Ireland to Tibet
and all those between
starvation in the barrios
even the dictator's slaughter of his own
there or
on some other sub-continent
where life means less than
an unclean pig
*
we buried pets and broken birds
beneath the sour plum
in the south orchard
we tossed egg-eating dogs
and unwanted litters
into a sinkhole
beyond the dynamite stump
I buried my last pet
under the bedroom window
*
we bury our children
one a day
next to their fathers
and their father's fathers
amidst an ocean of flags
and an occasional gray stone
engraved
unknown