Looking out: This space

This space

By Brandon Astor Jones

This is the first in a series of four poems that I feel the need to share here. In essence, this space will belong to the author of each poem for the duration of the series. It is my hope that readers will be as moved by them as I am.

This is where they came in

The grey ghosts are back again, stumbling and crying,
The babies, the ancients, the dead and the dying.
The poor hands held out for a morsel of bread,
The homes that are burning, the dying, the dead.

Our cruel brutal century drags its last year,
Pitiless, pointless, all guns, blood and fear.
Vietnam and Chile and Auschwitz as well —
Hitler and Eichmann are laughing in hell.

Rosemary Evans (from the work Kosov[a],

April 1999)

[The writer is a prisoner on death row in the United States. He welcomes letters commenting on his columns (include your name and full return address on the envelope, or prison authorities may refuse to deliver it). He can be written to at: Brandon Astor Jones, EF-122216, G3-63, Georgia Diagnostic & Classification Prison, PO Box 3877, Jackson, GA 30233, USA.]

From GLW issue 368