by Bárbara Renaud González
To Pfc. Kristian Menchaca, from Houston , Texas , who was captured and brutally killed in Iraq on June 16, 2006.
I am the sun and moon
And forever hungry
To hear your story.
Your mother, did she not love you?
I bet your father abandoned
Both of you. Is that why
You went off to war?
Your mother’s crying now, won’t talk
To CNN.
They’ve told her how you died.
She knows you suffered,
But I know much more.
They say you became a man
In the Army. I say
They planned it so
You had no choice but
To die so they could sleep,
Without fear of sharing a little bread.
Help us, God, take Kristian.
Your story is an old one
But I’m still hungry. Come, sit beside
the sun and moon.
Bárbara Renaud González is a writer/journalist in San Antonio. In 2000, González received the Inter-American Press Association Opinion prize in Santiage de Chile for columns "that inspire community debate." In 2001, González was censured for opposing aggression in Afghanistan after 9/11. González' work has been published in newspapers, magazines, and anthologies.
