indivisibility

a shadow creeping in at the edge of

the photograph, a head or a hand, something
sinister, an idea that spreads like cancer,
like the shadows of clouds or of starlings
across sleeping faces, meaningless sun
in a cerulean sky, runaway sons and daughters
and the ones sold for profit, the money needed
to fund secret wars, farmers with guns and
soldiers sticking bayonets through the
bellies of nuns, through the eyes and throats,
but not here, not in these manicured back
yards, not in these silent houses where the
men fuck each other’s wives, where the
wives dream of headless babies crying,
where they mix up their prescriptions and
sleep like pale blue corpses, a small table
by every neatly made bed, a letter on
each one that begins i need to see you, a
picture of a loved one smiling up into the
sun, hand raised against the glare, severed
head lying at the feet, blood in the spaces
between those shiny white teeth and a
shadow creeping in like cancer, just there
at the corner