by Siham Karami
As you were shopping for designer clothes,
My child was tortured by your husband's thugs,
The price to keep his job to buy you shoes.
Because we stood and chanted, "We refuse
This tyranny!" the bodies piled like jugs
While you were shopping for designer clothes.
He fights with tanks that no one can oppose.
From neighbors' rooftops snipers sink their slugs.
That's the price he pays to buy you shoes
That walk in the machinery of a ruse
To hide the human rubble as he shrugs,
So you can keep on shopping for the clothes
That lighten up his heart before he mows
Down men like grass, lets hospitals pull plugs,
The price to keep his job to buy you shoes
Whose path is getting rougher as it goes
Down darker where you can't tell men from bugs
And guts are dropping on designer clothes
And God knows where you're stepping with those shoes.
Siham Karami owns a technology recycling company in Florida where she lives with her family. Her work has been published in Innisfree Journal, The Lavender Review, 14 by 14, and other publications.
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