SYRIA

by Cally Conan-Davies

Photograph by Erik Ravelo from his 2013 sequence “Los Intocables” (“The Untouchables) featuring a variety of issues plaguing children around the world. “The right to childhood should be protected,” Ravelo writes.

plaster dust and blood
spattered face

strong words from diplomats
cannot touch or taste

what of us
compared to those

souls with eye-holes


Cally Conan-Davies is a writer who expresses here her rage.

BREATHMAKER

by Jeremy Bryant

"A five-day-long bombardment by Syrian government forces is reported to have killed more than 300 civilians in the rebel-held Eastern Ghouta area." —BBC News, February 23, 2018

This image—girl child with blood as rouge, with liquid eyes—how?
What words? "These children are part of the human cost."
There is only this—brokenness, only an endless gloaming.
What sights in the blurry background?
A mother who was making bread when the roof fell,
a mother whose dust caked face is lined with vertical tear stripes,
a mother waiting for her child's last breath. There is only this.

Jeremy Bryant is a poet and a writer of creative nonfiction. He is a graduate of the low residency MFA program at West Virginia Wesleyan College. Bryant is a spiritual writer who often explores universal suffering. His work may be found in Pikeville Review, EAOGH, TheNewVerse.News, and Prism.