by Phyllis Wax
I have been quoted as saying
not a leaf moves in Chile
without my permission
and that was so.
If anyone was tortured,
if anyone disappeared,
I would know. And I say
it didn’t happen. Those people,
with their accusations, labor
under mass hallucination.
The husbands, the children,
the fiancés they look for
are just figments
of their imagination.
Phyllis Wax’s work has appeared in many magazines and anthologies including Thema, Porcupine Literary Arts Magazine, California Quarterly, Free Verse, Wisconsin Academy Review, and she co-edited the 2002 Wisconsin Poets' Calendar. Wax lives in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, on a bluff overlooking Lake Michigan.