Nancy Flynn
One June Day: Fire, Heat, & Children Locked in Cages at the Texas-Mexico Border
here
in this land of savagery & lies,
a spider’s net between a branch & the eucalyptus chair
jails a brittle,
falling leaf
where,
on my island of dawning
bells, the horns are just disappearing
freight & the gutters need to be cleaned of more
fallen, the falling
broken
but still
here
as the trees reach
out for a sky turned scorch
yet more gasping, bitter
smoke at a sunrise that blinds, ashes
our eyes to the sight
of the cruelties while the prop
planes overhead deaden the pitch,
every cry
Nancy Flynn‘s books include Every Door Recklessly Ajar and Great Hunger. Her work has recently appeared in riverbabble 32 & 33, Smoky Blue Literary and Arts Magazine, and From the Finger Lakes: A Poetry Anthology and will soon be featured in Halfway Down the Stairs and The Dreamers Anthology: Writing Inspired by Martin Luther King, Jr. and Anne Frank. She grew up in northeastern Pennsylvania coal country, spent two decades in Ithaca, New York, and now lives in Portland, Oregon. A complete list of her publications is at www.nancyflynn.com.
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