Tag: #peace

Against the tides of war

Some of the best dancing 

happens at home in the kitchen, 

in the living room. I don’t often

dance, but sometimes a body 

needs to shake off shame

of the world. Right now, I dance 

as if there were a deep ocean 

at the meeting of my thighs, 

one there to keep invasion 

at bay, a noble prevention 

of blown-out buildings, 

of bowed heads. All 

of the horrors that go 

with war. We have been 

watching them unfold, 

shocked, even though 

we knew they would come, 

knew they would be there 

in this new war. 

*

Long ago, the goddess looked 

straight ahead like a deer watching,

like a wolf, like a lion, a bear. 

She cast spells of love and justice 

with each spoken word. 

The goddesses today 

have been made into statues 

with lowered gazes 

as if the air were already dust.

*

I dance in the kitchen 

with lights on, music eases 

out of speakers. I want to dance 

hard enough to sweat, for rain 

to fall, for peace to be 

a spell we can still cast.

—Liza Wolff-Francis

Waiting for Tragedy

(For the people of Ukraine)

Today, we stare at the architecture of war,
how core and studs crumble and quake
after an explosion. It seems we have lost,

the ways we look at our humanity,
forgotten how to connect with wildflowers
if we don’t own them. I peek, as I can,

from my screen into the blown-out
buildings to try to uncover something deeper
about this attack, to understand

the appeal of killing another human,
of taking of their cups and saucers,
their quilts, their children, their shoes,

their photos. We can chalk it all up
to power, but it seems like we’re making it
okay again to lose lives, to invade

a country, a people, to steal a place.
The humanness that spills
from the mounting bloody rubble

of war is stuck between tanks and guns.
The couches, baby toys, wooden tables
where families sat to share a meal,

a daily routine, toasts, and memories
left behind to the bombing of humanity,
the grotesque secret of us revealed.

The unsacred sacrilege of murder
that war calls for, sketch of bravado
or terror until collapse;

the tallest bombed buildings of homes
speak first with their height,
then with a stumble in the wind.

-Liza Wolff-Francis