Lori Lamothe
Palmyra
Beyond all these wonderful ruins extends an ocean of blazing sand, stretching all the way back to the horizon that appears to shimmer like a blue sea.
—Louis-François Cassas, 1785
Strange how there are places
where worlds meet.
Sand becomes sea becomes
sky, the line between
earth and air, past
and present, wavering
like a curtain filled with fire.
A rebel hides among
ruins, machine gun
heavy against his shoulder,
the blood of an infant
smeared across his shirt.
Behind clouds
the drone of a plane
splits silence in two
just as empires earlier
the march of Aurelian’s
troops on their way
to burn the city to ash
echoed through the temples
and the market square,
set a sleeping child crying.
Lori Lamothe is the author of three poetry collections, Kirlian Effect (FutureCycle Press, 2017), Happily (Aldrich Press, 2015) and Trace Elements (Aldrich Press, 2014). Her poems have appeared in Blackbird, Kettle Blue Review, The Journal, Painted Bride Quarterly, Verse Daily and elsewhere.
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