Toussaint’s Children
for Antoinette Gloria Penha

even before the earthquake

what Haitians in Haiti let-
have allowed to happen to
to happen with human life

sights and stories
to cause you to bring
or to want to bring up
what you had for breakfast

able to butcher a human being
until he or she were in pieces
without feet or hands or limbs

until a brain in a head
was upon a pavement
or upon a sidewalk

too extreme the carnage
too extreme the chaos,

the fuss, the fights
from the nights of the revolution

similar nights ever since
able to boil over any minute
over any unresolved matter

able to massacre
a congregation in prayer
people in church

able to, with machetes
kill a pregnant woman

I know a little about mayhem
I know of the hem
of the garment of Christ

of a woman with
an issue of blood

needing to touch it
needing to clutch it

what does Haiti need
to grab hold of to heal


© Obediah Michael Smith, 2010
2:30 p.m. 17.02.10