Even metaphor is a casualty of war.
Perfect Victims and the Politics of Appeal
I keep trying to write a poem
about the sea, or olive trees,
or bombs, but I do not have metaphors
for genocide, obliteration, extermination.
Nor a poetic way to counter the euphemisms
of protection, or self-defense.
Where apartheid becomes separation
and stolen is called contested.
If you want imagery, I will write that
this ground was already dark with blood
this land was already split by wire and broken by wall
these people already torn apart by muscle and gun
long before the fires of October.
But these are not metaphors.
Say ceasefire while bombs drop
and there is no longer meaning between us.
I cannot locate a metaphor for starvation,
no similes for rubble or rape.
This is not complicated.
If the trees are all uprooted,
none can eat the fruit.
If the wells are all destroyed,
none can drink the water.
If some people are driven into the sea,
all will drown.
These are not
I am not writing
I refuse to speak
in metaphors.
Adrienne Pilon is a teacher, poet, and essayist. Recent and forthcoming works appear in Dark Matter: Women Witnessing; Tendon Magazine; Susurrus and elsewhere.