Corkscrew Scars

"Let's draw and paint," the teacher says,
reaching up to squeeze the sun 
as if its orange still has juice.
As if her hands can salve a wound,
toss logs on fires of liberty,
feed hunger's walls with basic wheat.
Out come pencils pointing coal
at suffering, portraits of a massacre
with sharper chins than blue 
Picassos chisel from white innocence.
At seven, I was braiding 
Barbie's lion mane,
dressing her in high heeled pumps --
dusting off her pink Corvette,
dreaming of the open road.
My first wet kiss was not of death.

On Afghan soil, a little girl
is inking shrouds, clawing
at the iron mesh around
her sister's grated smile.
Her pen has spent the last black drop.
On Afghan soil, a little boy 
is sketching horror,
a body hanging from a limb.
Corkscrew scars, a class of Hell
too twisted for his cherub mind.
Three lookers with their
purple bruises turned away
from shots of cloying destiny.
At seven, I was baking cookies,
licking chocolate off a spoon,
learning where to put a fork,
fold linen napkins into fans.
Red spaghetti wasn't blood 
from lashings on my mother's flesh.

©  Janet I. Buck

***First Published in Branches Quarterly, January 2002

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