by Luke Welch
Late at night is the best time,
after the baked streets cool.
Then people appear
as bright constellations
moving about in the dim world.
Even their footprints
are incandescent trails
in the dust.
It is hard, in this light,
to discern enemy
from noncombatant,
a basket of bread
from a bomb.
Women and kids as radiant
as men of fighting age.
A pregnant woman
shimmers like a nebula
in my scope.
Far too easy
a target.
Luke Welch has published recently in Pemmican and Centrifugal Eye. He works as a sign language interpreter in northern Illinois.