WE DREAMED THE END OF THE WORLD

back then traced a shape
round female letter
gourd, ground, grail

in the smoky tavern 
by the sloping creek
a woman baking bread, singing

a song we didn’t know
about the first war, its poets dead
quaint souvenirs from a lost century

words cut open like trenches
second war closing in
crime without a name.

A man sang aiming his machine gun
at the neighbor’s billowing sheets
a woman driving him mad

wouldn’t let him sleep, wouldn’t stop
pleading with him to shoot, to kill her
after all his fellow soldiers had raped her

until they went soft, used sticks, guns
bottles. She looked like his sister
shiny black hair down to her hips.

PUBLISHED IN PIRENE’S FOUNTAIN, Volume 16, August 2023