Oppression Poetry

The last time I felt her rich darkness between my fingers
Somewhere else, metal yellow talons scraped clean the skin from her bones.
Bones piled and cataloged from a people who never lived and therefore couldn’t die.
Patches rubbed raw and gray, filled with lead and the footprints of men’s feet
The clutter and drainage of their leavings- cum and go- after desire.
Days go by, and she leaves in the pencil thin shards, bits of violence
From the fathers, of the sons, of the toddlers who’ll grow up dreaming of raping her
Not for her lush curves, fertile valleys, or smooth landscape
But for the interchangeability and thus inherent ownership displayed by their paradise.
Her tears clog and catch in sticks and leaves, Screaming-She echoes off deaf ears
Ears stopped up with the decay of previously growing things
Green algae and frogs seem to be the only thing moving against or under her skin.
Packed under the years of bile and toxins left decomposing against
What used to be hers. Nothing has been hers, or even remotely female since the last
How many? She can’t remember how many it’s been, or how long she’s just been lying,
Dying, in a pile of waste. Unable to get back up after the last explosion.
As my fingers sink deep into the soil, less fertile, less alive
I wonder what it would be like to be able to remember the way she shone
Before the sun set, merely a sparkle-wink, on the lives of her children.