::03:18:08::

::: Planting Peas :::

Eve is in jail again,
sweet friend of my daughter,
fierce black-clad angels of justice both.
Eve laid her body down
on a teeming Sunday freeway.
A cry for peace!
Felony conspiracy.

My daughter is not safely home
nor safely jailed with lovely Eve.
Impotent, I plant the peas.

I squeeze the earth within my hands,
this soil that I have built from waste
and shit and straw and love.

A mother watched in Al Mansoor today
her neighbors clear the crater where her garden was.
They harvested an arm, a torso and a head
of what was yesterday a daughter.

Impotent, I plant the peas.
Twist golden locks of clean, new straw,
tuck close these nests to cradle infant peas,
and weep for dreams of daughters gone.

My daughter is not safely home
and fear steals like a thief
right past my seedling nests of peas
to settle down triumphant in my belly.
I answer it with rage.

We rob the cradles of the world.
We smash them into splintered shreds
that find their mark and fester deep
in broken hearts of mothers just like me.
And what of justice?

No bombs fall in my garden today.
No shrapnel shreds my sleeping children’s beds.
I will not pull my daughters limbs
from a smoking hole where peas once grew.
Is that enough?

Here, other girls are locked in crowded cells
for speaking truth of a Sunday.

Eve is in jail again.
My daughter is not safely home.
A mother screams in Al Mansoor.
Impotent, I banish rage with earth
and dream that I am planting peace.

Written by: ~ Genissa