Charlottesville — By Elizabeth Perdomo

We come apart
at the edges; our world
falls upon a deep fissured space,
civilization tumbles into
dark heart
crevasses. Our
long quilted union
reveals unraveled seams,
thread-bare patches stretched
to bursting, fabric worn
thin from an uneasy
union.
Ancient fears again
reign
supreme, masked
yet tangible
as breath,
as lungs breathing in deep
lies like polluted
smoke rings.
Adrenalin shouts
lurid cadenzas, spews
vile divisions, false- premised
words call fallen hearts
into a more hopeless
insanity;
delusion-dulled minds
mute all ability to reason;
hatred colors each
loud thought red
with stolen
blood.

August 12 marks the two-year anniversary of the “Unite the Right” march in Charlottesville, Va. where Heather Heyer, a counterprotester, was killed.

Elizabeth Perdomo, born in Emporia, Kansas, raised in Winfield, has written poetry since a teen. “One Turn of Seasons,” includes her poetry and another’s photography. Recently, her poems appeared in “Kansas Time + Place,” “Interstice” and “The Chachalaca Review.” Perdomo now lives in the Rio Grande Valley of Texas.

Monthly Editor Maril Crabtree’s poems have been published in I-70 Review, Coal City Review, Main Street Rag, and others. Her book Fireflies in the Gathering Dark (Aldrich Press, 2017) is a Kansas Notable Book and Thorpe Menn Award finalist.

Advertisement