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Poetry || SubmissionsThe Zeinhom Morgue and Megiddo Junction,Two poems by Janet Buck Megiddo Junction Megiddo Junction, Israel. Rush hour sprayed with body parts. Forty wounded. A passenger bus reduced to obsidian skeletons. The poets I know are living in bowls of bloodshed weeping the sides of the clay. They long for a different breath where smoking wreckage isn't all they own for air. What is evil, what is good -- murky as clear goldfish glass poisoned by conditioned veins. Reuters assembles a calendar: two years inside millenniums, not a month is exempt from the strike of a needless death. Not a week slides by unrattled by hatred showing its moldering eye. Plums could be a wet grenade. Armageddon heads a simple grocery list. As fingers attempt the dance of their art, others are pushing the buttons of bombs. Resolving these wars is not in their books. It seems a reach without arms. Religious factions fracturing, jabberwocky politics, where beards are shaking their dust over the bin of a spreading grave. Last night's news said: "65 miles of fences in store..." Adding more height to toppling sense. Twisting the barb, stacking the stone. Fences are already thick. Crush and crash are license plates. Victims, victims everywhere -- like cherry blossoms grace our streets. I slice and dice a seedless melon, thinking of black olive pits. 6/5/2002 The Zeinhom Morgue Cairo to Luxor. Islam's biggest feasting hour. Going home for Eid al-Adha -- the ritual where God gave Abraham a ram to save his son from sacrifice. The train was overbooked, they say: "chaotic, crowded, comfortless." People slept in luggage racks. No heat, no room, no dining car -- no windows, just the whipping wind to spread the red-tongued flame. Pushing, pushing metal walls that wouldn't move. Three cars of mute accordions with soot for pleats. On AOL, the color photo only has six shades of gray. Those who touched, who didn't perish speak of fingers clawing through smoke. At the Zeinhom morgue, a young man searches for his kin. Reports the bodies charred beyond an eye's appraisal: headless, limbless general ash. There were no lists of passengers, pharaohs trapped in consequence. The irony of livestock wandering the carriage box just to enter into death. My pen remembers other flames, thinks of time as fuchsia buds, tremulous, frail, quick to fry. It seems this year the Fates are pouring grief our way like milk on morning cereal. Prince Alwaleed bin Talal, propitious Saudi billionaire, donates cash to widows, orphans of the fire. A pittance for the loss of love. Coins rattle for the grab inside the terra cotta skull. See Al Ahram about the morgue fire Janet Buck is a three-time Pushcart Nominee and the author four collections of poetry. In 2002, her work is forthcoming in The Montserrat Review, Recursive Angel, New Works Review, Coelacanth, Carnelian, Arbutus, and dozens of journals world-wide. Today's Situation
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