Haunted

by Margery Parsons / October 27th, 2024

I am haunted by Gazan children:
those pulled from rubble still breathing
that news media label a “miracle,”
those who lost a leg or an arm,
or both legs and both arms.
The real haunting begins
with those who are dead and gone,
who yesterday were playing,
riding bicycles,
kicking socker balls around,
shouting in the music of children
bringing joy to hovels,
hope for brighter times to come.
The last sounds they heard were bombs
MADE IN THE USA
and walls crumbling in.
Today they are little hands sticking out of graves of stones,
or wrapped in white body bags
with their parents, or uncles or cousins
keening over them
or given to a screaming family member
as a bag of bones.
They could have been my child, my neighbor’s child
or the little girl in the red dress
in the Holocaust film
“Schindler’s List,”
reminding us
those were beautiful children who were gassed,
reminding us
what they could have been.
Imagine what all these beautiful children could have been
in a world that values them,
sees them all as precious.
We must remember this─
those of us in an empire that is guilty as sin
this is on us,
this is on us.
We should all be haunted by responsibility
to not allow this to continue on.

Margery Parsons is a poet and advocate for a radically different and better world. She lives in Chicago and in addition to poetry loves music and film. Her poems have been published in Rag Blog, Poetry Pacific, Calliope, New Verse News, OccuPoetry, Rise Up Review, Haiku Universe, Madness Muse Press and Illinois Poetry Society, with a forthcoming poem in Plate of Pandemic. Read other articles by Margery.

This article was posted on Sunday, October 27th, 2024 at 8:00am and is filed under Poetry.