Thursday, 28 May 2009
And It’s Only April
By Leah Aronoff
The earth’s restless skin
quivers, shivers, and shakes
as if it, too, had the flu.
Wherever it lands
there’s no rest for the eye.
What humans don’t touch,
the earth will deal with
episodically quaking and shaking,
Not one square inch overlooked.
Wind-stressed poppies
are blown to shreds in Zargabad,
while a team of seventy blue clad
women win a hectic dragon boat race in Mannao.
The Seychelles grab nine pirates
in the Indian Ocean
while seven policemen are
killed in Tijuana.
Throughout the world
people hack, shiver, and cough
while 300,000 pigs, deprived of all movement
are ordered slain in Egypt,
and downtown Baltimore drowns.
A tour bus crashes in Soledad,
wildly ejecting passengers at will.
From January to April Iraq has counted
339 bombing deaths,
while Afghanistan crumbled under
2,700 insurgent attacks.
And it’s only April.
The planet’s skin has an unappeasable itch
and the whole world is scratching.
Posted by Ronni Bennett at 06:50 AM | Permalink | Email this post
Comments
The comments to this entry are closed.
Leah - Nicely written, clever, and a bit depressing! I'm having trouble enough being over 70. Couldn't you at least have mentioned that the sun came up again this morning?!- Sandy
Posted by: sandy | Thursday, 28 May 2009 at 08:24 AM
With the month of April in the title, I started thinking showers, flowers, etc. Wasn’t I surprised! Amazingly clever piece.
And oh—those poor poor pigs…
“It's no surprise that the global swine flu crisis came from pigs, as pigs these days are raised on factory farms” (May 28, 2009) PETA
Posted by: Claire Jean | Thursday, 28 May 2009 at 09:31 AM
Great stuff!
Negative, yes, but perhaps the fact that the earth spins on is positive enough...
Posted by: Cowtown Pattie | Thursday, 28 May 2009 at 11:05 AM
Sometimes I just wish I never had to hear of another tragedy. There are so many. It's a cruel world and horrors happen in every country.
You wrote it well,
Thank God, it's balanced by good news and good things happening.
Posted by: Darlene | Thursday, 28 May 2009 at 01:15 PM
I am now contemplating suicide.
...just kidding.
Posted by: James J Henry Jr | Friday, 29 May 2009 at 12:44 PM
This is stunning, Leah. Depressing but so utterly true.
I wouldn't want us to be less informed than we are but how hard it is to be inundated with proof of our differences, not to mention our fragile state...
Posted by: Nikk Stern | Thursday, 04 June 2009 at 07:03 AM