Juan Felipe Herrera THE WOMEN TELL THEIR HISTORIES

The women tell their stories in Austin,
they tower over the table, their hot work hands
greet me, they speak of their children. The earth
I think, oh, yes, the earth.

Cloned maize men unload another ship through
genetically altered skies and an MC-130 Combat Talon plane
drops into Khundahar, Afghanistan—15,000 pound fuel
air explosives, what is left now? A flower of ethylene and
propylene, then a Cluster Bomb, filled
with 202 "bomblets"—what am I saying:

Better to say peanut butter, Pop Tarts,
rice and potatoes instead, the same color of village fires,
a yellow can comes down in the name of the Nomenclature.

The question of Kabul, Kashmir, Fallujah
comes up, the question of colonization and
saliva, bacteria in the atoms of expansion drills
into the howling child, this rubble boy:

eat, step lightly on the mines
of the Russian-American war, dear little one
with your folded arms caressing a fender
for shelter.