Lipstick
by: Maggie Butt (1955- )
from Lipstick
In war time women turn to red
swivel-up scarlet and carmine
not in solidarity with spilt blood
but as a badge of beating hearts.
This crimson is the shade of poets
silenced for speaking against torture,
this vermillion is art
surviving solitary confinement,
this cerise defies the falling bombs
the snipers taking aim at bread-queues,
this ruby’s the resilience of girls
who tango in the pale-lipped face of death.
by: Maggie Butt (1955- )
from Lipstick
In war time women turn to red
swivel-up scarlet and carmine
not in solidarity with spilt blood
but as a badge of beating hearts.
This crimson is the shade of poets
silenced for speaking against torture,
this vermillion is art
surviving solitary confinement,
this cerise defies the falling bombs
the snipers taking aim at bread-queues,
this ruby’s the resilience of girls
who tango in the pale-lipped face of death.
(Based on observations in Bosnia and Afghanistan
by war photographer Jenny Matthews.
Confirmed by the Max Factor catalogue 1945.)
Confirmed by the Max Factor catalogue 1945.)
The Family Has Been Informed
by: Roger Elkin (1943- )
by: Roger Elkin (1943- )
|
not of the salt-mill of
stars
in the bleak night skies
not of the chill mists
slipping
from hillsides, and the eerie stillness
that falls
over village, over road,
over goat and sheep trail,
the
look-out posts
not of the taste of
grit dust,
of sand on fear-dry lips,
or the way it clogs
nostrils
and places veilings over eyes
so you understand why
faces of locals
are swathed in scarves
not of the fact that
there is not ever
the slightest chance you’d catch a glance
of
a sniper’s profile, only fire flash
barking through darkness
from distant Kalashnikovs
not of the wide open
faces of mates
collapsing to caricatures of string-puppets
sliding – slowly, slowly – out of action,
heads
lolloping forward,
and limbs slithering
as when bullets
bring into flower
their fleshy wounds,
startling, blood-fresh
no, not any of
this:
all that goes without saying,
is part of the job
but of the fact that last night on patrol in Helmand Province, their son became the one hundredth serviceman so far this year |
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