What Rough Beast Standard Edition | Poem for April 18, 2020

Susan Craig
Boy from Brazil

And the world isn’t moved to care.
—Liz Sly

Trudging uphill in snow, diminished
not merely by distance but clearly little,
a child sock-footed, climbing. A woman
below finds his skis, begins hiking waving
them high, yells to ask if he’s ours—
we ski down to the boy who now sits

with blue socks ice-encrusted. Tomás,
he murmurs, speaks English only um puoco
doesn’t cry, keeps his eyes down, needs
not American words but his mãe—his
six-year-old finger rises like a feather
to the white-coated peak. In Idlib

a father holds his black-haired, onyx-
eyed daughter frozen, dark brows still
lifted in question. Now the ski patrol lifts
Tomas onto his snowmobile, they zip
away into thin air—someplace called
safety, someone’s arms— a salvação

Susan Craig is a graphic designer in Columbia, S.C. Her poems have appeared in KakalakMom Egg ReviewThe Collective IFall Lines, and Jasper, among other publications.

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