The arms I sing. Forget the man, there is
no other epic. Sing the arms of kids,
the ones with pustules all along their veins
like runway track lights burning for a plane
that blew up hours ago with no survivors.
The ones with runes no parent can decipher,
one message, knifed and scarred and knifed again
in a mystic tongue forgotten who knows when.
The arms imprinted with a shadow grip
as if the dad who grabbed and crushed had dipped
his hand in black paint first. The arms with tight
arcs of perforation: human bites
that get infected faster than a dog’s.
The toddler’s arms with both hands scalded raw
all glisteny and hog-pink, swollen taut,
the tantrum over, the lesson taught,
two signal fires that call across a plain
the city is sacked and all the children slain.
