Head of a Mourning Female, 4th-5th century
Stucco sculpture, Pakistan, Gandhara region, or Afghanistan
24.13 x 17.14 x 18.42 cm
Image courtesy of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art
…one video shows 12-year-old Hassan
and his sister Joudi, a
one-year-old toddler in diapers,
lying motionless on the floor
next to a washing machine.
—CNN, April 9, 2018
why must children sleep
with such devastating freedom
sarin pries through the weave
of a body but
not all carnage is stark
as annihilation
blood
spattered socks along
a sacrum
not all carnage a hog
tied adolescent
a ten year old boy
handcuffed at his grandmother’s house
wets himself on camera
there is nothing pure
white snow blank
-eting rabbits in a field
The federal government has
reported that nearly 3,000
children were forcibly separated
from their parents under last
year’s “zero tolerance”
immigration policy, under which
nearly all adults entering the
country illegally were
prosecuted, and any children
accompanying them were put
into shelters or foster care.
—New York Times, January 17, 2019
a braid
of famine and surfeit
a ghost
eating a yellow hairclip.