The Last Cloves

U.S. Air Strikes - (Poets Against War)

In the four minutes/ it took me to mince the cloves,/ dump the tea leaves/ in the rose bush,/and soap the carafe,/ a whole city was lost./

There were feet still in school shoes,/ limp flesh singing into satchels,/ clinging to a post, a shattered clock.

The children, if not orphaned,/ were purpled beyond recognition./ Orders had been carried down,/one signal igniting another./ And a man had let a deafening rhapsody/ guide his young hand to/ drop a five hundred pound bombon a mosque.

Just when I finished rinsing the carafe,/ a whole city was under cement dust and smoke,/ and I thought I heard screaming/ behind walls of fire/ in the kettle’s sharp whistle,/ just when I added the cloves,/ the last green lime./

--Shadab Zeest Hashmi: (She is the editor of the annual Magee Park Poets Anthology.)