Nativity
Abstraction
by
Barbara Phillips
she
nods over the eggnog in her hand
face
lined, suffused with tree glow
so
long ago and yet I can’t forget
she
says, as she turns, eyes moist from the smoky
fire
or something else; it’s hard to tell
my
sister and I, on the run, in the forest
heavy
with bombs falling, drizzle, frost
more
dead than alive
I
was tempted just to lie down, let something kill me
then
the cry; I thought it was a cat or a rabbit
an
excuse to stop, roast something, try to camp
against
logs sodden, yet giving the illusion of shelter
the
body beside the child shattered, the child
in
rags, stained by shreds of flesh, and the blood
enough
to drown in, so thick, getting darker by the second
in
the twilight of that Christmas Eve, when a silence
of
sorts came back, as the seraphim of steel slipped
into
clouds falling through pain torn horizons
when
I picked her up I remembered what it was to be alive
we
cleaned her off in an abandoned house, and from a surviving
cow we got milk; we got so giddy, we cried
I
told people at the refugee camp she was my daughter
we
were each others’ angels; we went to the head of the
line
with families for emigration, away from
forests
hemorrhaging death, endings beyond reason
body
parts sown across the underbrush in bizarre abstraction
mercy
an alien unknown, tears another way of bleeding
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