Footage from Aleppo — Roy Beckemeyer

“…a lark talking madness in some corner of the sky.” – Joseph Auslander, from his poem “Dawn at the Rains Edge.”

Laser-eyed bombs streak in, unheard

and unseen until the earth,

flash-blinded by frenzy,

grabs the sky by the throat,

shakes it, erupts, rolls up.

A flock of short-toed larks takes flight

at the madness, sweeps over

the roadside in an aching cloud,

a dancing random swirl,

movements mirrored, for just a moment,

by a dead man’s keffiyeh, blown free,

billowing: birds and scarf together

a stark calligraphy, a sort of script,

a staging, a new orthography of atonement.

~ Roy Beckemeyer

Roy J. Beckemeyer was President of the Kansas Authors Club from 2016-2017. His latest book of poetry is Stage Whispers (Meadowlark-Books, 2019). Music I Once Could Dance To won the Kansas Notable Book award (Coal City Press, 2014).

November editor, Ronda Miller, is State President of the Kansas Authors Club (2018 – 2019). Her three books of poetry include Going Home: Poems from My Life, MoonStain (Meadowlark-Books, 2015) and WaterSigns (Meadowlark-Books, 2017). Miller lives in Lawrence but returns to wander The Arikaree Breaks of Cheyenne county every chance she gets. Kansas Authors Club.

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2 thoughts on “Footage from Aleppo — Roy Beckemeyer

  1. Love the earth grabbing the sky by the throat, and the play of the letters m, b & s in the last five lines. A master of sonics and imagery, as always.

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