My Gods

My Gods

there is a child whose fingers have grown

into wire caging     whose tears

no longer stain her face

whose little cries are drowned out by hawks

screeing through desert air like a threat

she is my god

thee ia mother    or nearly mother

holding her belly as if it were a bowl

speaking only to it

she whispers of their Somewhere Else

being the only safe place

before you come screaming

on to tinfoil wrap

meant to keep her warm in desert's cold

she is my god

there are my sisters      brown as beans

laying broken in gullies

in ditches, under trees and floating like dead fish

in cold mountain streams

along Hell's Highway

where cast-off red dresses

lay crumpled where they had lain

their voices speaking dirt and sand

pine needles and driftwood poems

so dark they will turn us all into stone

these are my gods

there are brothers    who march

like little toy soldiers off ships and planes

that have shark teeth painted on their noses

who take to sand like it was a terrible home

they return to for whatever reason The Man deems his right

for oil and land that will one day be taken

by other toy soldiers   and people scramble

like ambushed ants      from anthills alive

with the gain of their guard

because they are loyal to a land of their own

because someone bigger and better than them     

so they said      so they taught them   to scurry

while the big men holler after them to go     to go

these men are my gods

and a child dies of heat stroke

and a baby is spilled out into sand

and sons of other mothers  are blown to bits

because someone bigger or so-called better

left them to their own

to live or die

these are those who have that something divine in them

in their living     in their deaths

and we     should have no other gods

before them

in service of some kind      as scapegoats     as subjugates

our surrogates     in simply living to die

and dying to live      like gods

©Carol Desjarlais 7.3.19