On the radio I hear
cries of war, a distant
story of the gory results
of a bomb, far away,
and close in the speakers
of my car. I learn
of pots and pans
and water, still simmering,
on the stove. A family gathered
around for dinner,
a scene now eerily compressed
in radio waves.
The family’s clean house
now painted with dust and
fallen chunks of construction,
mixed with plasma echoes
in the reporter’s voice
over chatter of the clean up crew
shaking in a home, strangely quite,
I imagine. And still. How still
it must be now, life has gone,
and the only movement is
that water on the stove.
The bombs keep falling and
stories keep coming over
air waves and televisions.
The world is slowly quieting
as all over water boils over,
turns ichor and thick
and the stove is left burning.
