Asymmetry

We have, we have not.
We see, we are confused.
We hear, we misunderstand.
What’s clear in the wreckage of war
is that some things can’t be put back
together;
shredded paper
smashed porcelain
bones, bones, bones
of the dead,
families missing their pieces,
while sane explanations of
“strategies” for “winning”
explode like bombs in our ears
leaving a hollow ring.

“There has been an asymmetrical response,”
one reporter said,
stepping out on the ledge of his career,
and his honest statement almost felt
like hope,
which has run out for tens of thousands,
and my carefully gleaned philosophy
that all things work for good
is a hard fit these days
a shrunken sweater that won’t go over my head
as I hear the world call “peace,”  “peace,”  “peace,”
cease the fire,
stop the killing
stop killing children.  

.

Karen Warinsky began publishing poetry in 2011 and was named as a finalist in the Montreal International Poetry Contest in 2013. Her work appears in several anthologies including Nuclear Impact: Broken Atoms in Our Hands, the 2019 Mizmor Anthology, and lit mags including Blue Heron, Circumference and Consilience. She is a 2023 Best of the Net nominee. Her books are Gold in Autumn (2020), Sunrise Ruby, (2022) (both from Human Error Publishing), and Dining with War (2023, Alien Buddha Press). Warinsky coordinates poetry readings under the name Poets at Large in CT and MA. Find her at http://karenwarinskypoetry.wordpress.com