by Indran Amirthanayagam
The age of dinosaurs is over—ferocious ones who ate
meat, tearing off opponents' skulls, stomping on them
for breakfast, predecessors of Atilla the Hun, Bokassa
who ate human blood, and the island potentate who
negotiated surrender of the remaining Tiger leaders to shoot
them down while they held white flags. No. Not on our watch.
The new dinosaur, killing by thousands in the neighbor's house
of Ukraine, will be stopped in one way or via the highway,
that glorious road leading not to exile or a humanitarian
pause, but as with dictators of childhood nightmares—Hitler,
Stalin, Tonton Macoute, wherever we draw our fears—into
the light we shine on his crimes as we put him on the dock
in absentia, not by 'Frisco Bay but in the Hague, while some
of our family members stagger out of the cave, blinking, still alive.
Indran Amirthanayagam's newest book is Ten Thousand Steps Against the Tyrant (BroadstoneBooks). Recently published is Blue Window (Ventana Azul), translated by Jennifer Rathbun.(Dialogos Books). In 2020, Indran produced a “world" record by publishing three new poetry books written in three languages: The Migrant States (Hanging Loose Press, New York), Sur l'île nostalgique (L’Harmattan, Paris) and Lírica a tiempo (Mesa Redonda, Lima). He writes in English, Spanish, French, Portuguese, Haitian Creole and has twenty poetry books as well as a music album Rankont Dout. He edits The Beltway Poetry Quarterly and helps curate Ablucionistas. He won the Paterson Prize and received fellowships from The Foundation for the Contemporary Arts, New York Foundation for the Arts, US/Mexico Fund For Culture, and the MacDowell Colony. He hosts the Poetry Channel on YouTube.