And Here Is A Poem About. . .

                                                White Soup

                The man’s hands strap

                wire, duct tape, SimTex

                around the narrow barrel of his chest.

                Trembling footsteps take him finally through the busy shuk,

                where he detonates.  And then there is nothing but the

                high still screaming

               

                of sirens through the Jerusalem hills. 

                A grim doctor slaps the X-ray of a five-year-old girl

                onto a fluorescent surface.  Blank white as a screen, her organs

                an irreparable red gumbo of blood, nerves, muscle tissue.

                She has an hour, maybe less.  From the next room

                he hears the girl’s soft coughing,

                the pinging spit of black bile into a bowl.

                He slumps against the cinderblock wall and waits,

                unable to remedy the damage

                of hands,

                of man.