Guidelines



Submission Guidelines: Send unpublished poems in the body of an email (NO ATTACHMENTS) to nvneditor[at]gmail.com. No simultaneous submissions. Use "Verse News Submission" as the subject line. Send a brief bio. No payment. Authors retain all rights after 1st-time appearance here. Scroll down the right sidebar for the fine print.

Thursday, September 26, 2013

FOR KENYA

by Rick Gray


Image source: Yahoo! News


We're not sorry, al-Shabaab, for wasting
our troubled youths on African pleasures
your imported bullets will never find.

Your aims will forever miss us,
whose aging hearts have grown wise on
everything you so preciously despise.

So kill the kaffirs in the mall
to satisfy your schoolboy's mind.
We know those who can make you cry

why God is great, without books or prayers,
pure as a country who offered us
everything she had

all that is holy and wild
in the wicked smiles of lovely women
who have cursed you blind.


Rick Gray served in the Peace Corps in Kenya. He currently teaches in Afghanistan. He has poems forthcoming in Salamander and r.kv.r.y.