The woman on TV
envied the rivers of America.
She was toothless, wrinkled,
like the morning after a violent storm.
Surrounded by others just like her,
she bent into the television camera,
so close you could hear the blood creep
through the veins in her cheeks.
She said she’d make no trouble,
was a good woman behind her wilting veils
and was willing to make sacrifices –
well hadn’t she done that already?
The woman on TV
was then hauled back by robed hands
and another face took her place,
and another, then another.
It felt like a market, but not for goods,
but for grief, for guilt,
for what you can’t unsee.
for what you can’t unhear.