by William Heyen

At the track, I served as hugger.
My job — to congratulate the runners, finishers
or not, winners or winners,
even those who from far their lanes did wander,

not lost, but among easels of flowers, gleeful,
for the summer days seemed to call them elsewhere,
& their feet, crutches, & wheelchairs
took them there with cheers for all that is hopeful.

by William Heyen

The Hutu leader of a small Rwandan village
suffered from his government’s rebuke:
he’d been lax in “bush-clearing” —
in cutting the Tutsi from his community.
His own wife was Tutsi.  He felt ashamed.

He called a meeting so that his people
might search their own souls.
He took his four sons with him.
He confessed he’d set a poor example.
But this very morning he said,

he’d killed his wife.  Still, he declared,
this was not enough.  To achieve Hutu purity,
all Tutsi blood must be expunged.
Quickly, with one stroke of his machete,
he struck off the head of his eldest son.

The three others were dragged outside
& themselves slaughtered.  He then felt
he’d begun to do his moral duty . . . .
The village darkened with Hutu-Tutsi blood.
Metallic flies materialized by the cloudful.

by William Heyen

Iwo Jima, 1945 — a small boat intercepted
a transport evacuating a wounded Marine,
asked for the casualty, was granted permission:
Captain Charles C. Anderson
carried his only son,

Sergeant Charles C. Anderson, Jr., to his own vessel.
The boy had lost both legs & one arm
from a land mine.  “I’m feeling pretty good,”
he told his father.  “I wonder how Mother
will take this.”  Then he died.

In Washington, a Navy chaplain visited Mrs. Anderson.
The moment she saw him she asked,
“Is it my husband, or my son?”  The chaplain told her.
“A force stronger than ours
has taken charge,” she said,

“and our beloved son resides with us on earth
no more.”  She dressed & went to work
as a hospital volunteer.

by Emily Carmen

Manholes allow access to underground structures.
I fell into one today and hit my head on
cement.  Now, my DNA twists about behind}
my eyes and turns from red to gold, and
back into the python that bore me.

I admit, I was walking backwards and
had my eyes closed.  After climbing out, I found
myself at the local butcher’s; each pig carcass
was a year old, their angry eyes accused me of not
paying attention.  The trees turned black
against the sky, and half a porker waddled by
to check my pulse.

If you would wrap yourself around the pain
behind my eyes, I’d stop reading Flaubert and
the Christian mystics.  I’ll wear myself out
remaining accessible; or are you pleased that
nothing can be done, and that I’ll continue to
fall, over and over again, a broken branch
past the crater’s edge?