flickr photo
By
Betsy Mars
Clue
“I like to think of them as being like the plagues of locust that used to be around the world, except they eat plants we don’t care about,” said Brown. “They’re looking for what we consider weeds, and as they feed, they build up big populations”*
“[Trump] declined to join expressions of mounting concern about white nationalism, saying ‘I don’t, really’ when asked whether he thought it was a rising threat around the world. ’I think it’s a small group of people that have very, very serious problems, I guess’”**
This time
it was Colonel Mustard with a musket
in a mosque, livestreaming
deaths, screams
in a darkened down under
scarlet dream where children prayed
to dodge the bullet spray.
Professing their faith and shattered
as Mister White-with-a-weapon
taints sacred ground, leaves bodies battered.
He remakes the world in his image, an alt-right haven
& on a sunny day all across the LA sprawl
painted ladies fly unseen corridors,
weave their migrant trails above mini-malls,
take the I-5 toward the unwalled border
winging north to propagate,
some crushed on the windshield of fate.
They didn’t hear death come up from behind,
intent, as they were, on their prayerful mission.
In the musalla, a hammering of bullets stopping time.
Identify the suspect, find the weapon,
trap them in the Hall or Ballroom or Kitchen –
any Boddy™ could be ours
next time.
Betsy Mars
Betsy Mars is a Connecticut-born, mostly California-raised poet and educator. Her parents gave her an early appreciation for language and social justice, which her childhood years in Brazil reinforced. She has a bachelor’s and master’s degree from USC which she puts to no obvious use. A mother, avid traveler, and animal lover, her work has recently appeared in The Rise Up Review, Writing in A Woman’s Voice, and The Ekphrastic Review, as well as in a number of anthologies and the California Quarterly.
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