The Colors of Genocide
The once-white skulls were stacked
as systematically as the slaughter,
each settling slightly as though still
connected to a sinew of
spine, the sockets of their eyes
staring sidelong so as not,
it would seem, to spy heaven;
weathered from the sun and dust of
clay, they resemble from afar
potatoes, the witness starving
until he approaches and his
eyes set on the smaller ones.
It is the sheer number of piles that
over time gives a second strength
to the knees of the feeble
while the strong stare at the clay and
argue over the colors as red and
brown blend and bleed into beds of
damp soil blanketing a scrum of bones.
• • •
Thomas Locicero’s most recent poems have appeared or are forthcoming in vox poetica, Bindweed Magazine, Birmingham Arts Journal, Clockwise Cat, Snapdragon, felan, The Ghazal Page, Red Savina Review, and The Poet’s Haven, among other journals. He lives in Broken Arrow, Oklahoma.