Idlib, Syria | San Francisco, California
by Sofia Skavdahl
I’m loading the dishwasher tonight and
on CNN the newscaster reports how just
hours ago a mustard-colored mushroom
cloud dropped, soft as snow in Idlib and
their cameraman had managed to
capture children screaming, waking up
to a clean house but their mothers are
dead and buried beneath cement,
one still cradling her baby, who only lived to
know the taste of breastmilk and gas.
Earlier today I was walking home
from the Goodwill, my brown paper bag split
open and passerbyers rushed to
pick broken dishes off the sidewalk and there,
a woman is buried, her mother is buried
and probably her sister, but I cursed the
paper bag, scowled at the men trying to help
me— I paid 10 cents for that torn up bag and
my neighbors cared so much for those
broken dishes and I say fuck
you Assad, Anderson Cooper says
goodnight America and I sleep, I dream
in shame.
This poem was originally published in TK.