by Bonnie Naradzay
This is a story of heaped-up corpses, bagged in sacks.
Masked workers spray everything with a bleach solution.
Bodies, marked with cardboard tags, are piled up in stacks.
A bulldozer covers them, make a mounded earth cushion.
In Port au Prince, candidates woo voters with music and floats.
Masked workers spray everything with a bleach solution.
The streets throng with supporters singing jingles for votes
Political rallies may end with gunfire, voodoo and fights.
In Port au Prince, candidates woo voters with music and floats.
Cholera patrols the streets at night under sporadic electric lights.
Death accompanies earthquakes, cholera, and torrential rain.
Political rallies may end with gunfire, voodoo and fights.
UN troops patrol in trucks, their half-hearted greetings in vain.
Half-naked men from the slums wade into sewage to clean it.
Death accompanies earthquakes, cholera, and torrential rain.
Candidates dance, shout jingles, collide near mounded graves.
This is a story of heaped-up corpses, bagged in sacks.
Half-naked men from the slums wade into sewage to clean it.
Bodies, marked with cardboard tags, are piled up in stacks.
Bonnie Naradzay lives in the Washington DC area, earned her MFA in poetry from Stonecoast, University of Southern Maine, and has published in many print and online journals.
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