Dust on the Tongue~

          “Silence is violence” Alicia Keys

In an ambulance, a small boy sits stunned,
his stare encrusted with mud, blood, ash.
Seeing him, we touch our own cheeks, shutter.

Two rescued brothers clutch one another
in a hospital hallway, wailing their loss.
Hot tears well up as we watch them sob.

A mother runs from the rubble of a cousin’s funeral
barrel-bombed, her daughter flopping across her arms.
We stop the sequence, shut our laptops.

But this: wearing our silence, men are murdering children.
White Hats keep finding them. Grandmothers bury them.
And, overcome with grief, we retreat, stutter as we say we want it to stop.

News Links (find out more):  NPR, CNN, Al Jazeera, NY Times, Huffington Post

Audio Link (hear Anne read the poem): SoundCloud

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