by Tara Menon
A yellow finch with blacks stripes on wings
stands on what’s left of a yellow zinnia.
The yellow finch explodes like the sun
after the rain and gloom of the day’s news.
I don’t bury my head in the sand.
The world throbs its troubles
and I feel its accelerated pulse.
The wars, the famines, the wildfires,
and zooming in, the family tragedy
of a woman, dedicated to her three children,
who strangled them when her husband
went to fetch pizza. She leaped to the ground
from a second-story window,
hoping for death, only to end up paralyzed
and put on trial.
It’s bad enough immigrants are put behind bars,
killed or handed trumped up charges.
It’s bad enough Black men are killed
for routine traffic violations.
Mothers with postpartum psychosis
are taken to trial and some are imprisoned
when they should be treated in hospitals.
The tragedy of lost children is compounded.
The yellow finch. The yellow finch.
The explosion of yellow on yellow.
Tara Menon is an Indian-American writer based in Lexington, Massachusetts. She is a two-time finalist for the Willow Run Poetry Book Award. Her latest poems have appeared in Gray Sparrow Journal, The New Verse News, The Sucharnochee Review, Tipton Poetry Journal, and Blue Heron Review.