The loading

We’re packed,

Stacked, one crushed against the other,

Ehva tight against my breast,

Adam gripping my legs, face hidden,

Barely breathing.

Cattled for the past month,

We’ve gone camp to camp, caged,

Barbed wire cutting us separate from the world,

Ghosts fleshed yet unfleshed, spirits   

Briefly haunting the tv screens, and perhaps your dreams,

But we are, remain, forgotten,

Dregs of a war whose currency remains profit

For those hidden yet highly visible few.

I hear the guard approaching –

“Move in,” he shouts, “There’s more of you scum

to come. Move in, you Hell’s whores!”

Behind me an old woman trembles;

The sun has burnt us all, days spent on the road,

No shade, the land barren, despairing,

Dust ground finer beneath our passing feet.

“Get the fuckers loaded” – another voice is raised.

“Use the prod, for fuck’s sake. Get them moving!

They do not belong here.”

We are packed;

the guards’ words reflect reality –

the politicians’ tongue  - “You are all welcome” - an act

that shatters as we are tasered,

pushed into the rail trucks,

the doors closing on yet another hope of a home.