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Ellery Akers: Smoke

War is one group of people 
who are going to die

making sure another group of people 
who are going to die

die sooner.

And so rubble, shrapnel, 
a girl in a torn skirt
face down in a ditch.

She was going to die anyway, 
but this way she died sooner.

.

Copyright 2020 Ellery Akers. From Swerve: Environmentalism,Feminism and Resistance (Blue Light Press, 2020) by Ellery Akers. Included by permission of the author.

Ellery Akers‘ previous collection, Practicing the Truth, won the 2014 Autumn House Poetry Prize, the 2015 Bay Area Book Festival Award, and a 2015 Independent Publisher Book Award. She lives on the coast of Northern California.


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6 comments on “Ellery Akers: Smoke

  1. melpacker
    May 26, 2020
    melpacker's avatar

    Often, we find that only the fewest of words carry the most meaning. This is one of those times. As the famous picture of the Vietnamese girl with napalm burns so aptly told us of our war crimes, so does this short poem trumpet the futility of wars.

    Liked by 1 person

  2. selina333333333
    May 25, 2020
    selina333333333's avatar

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  3. janfalls
    May 25, 2020
    janfalls's avatar

    wow! powerful few words!

    Liked by 1 person

  4. selina333333333
    May 25, 2020
    selina333333333's avatar

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    Liked by 1 person

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This entry was posted on May 25, 2020 by in Poetry, War and Peace.

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