Poems by Bruce E. Whitacre

Cinnamon and Famine

After forty years of badges, cubicles and 401 (k)’s
all that one does and all that is done to one
your privilege is ground fresh beans and yogurt
cold boiled eggs in a sunny window.
Bills and sick calls crowd your plate.
But under the placemat bleeding mouths
seep their crises onto the table
aroma of cinnamon and famine.

​The kitchen floats in migrant waters.
Juice is the red of the shot boy’s blood.
How not to starve when every meal is stolen?
How to fill the cruel void of thoughts and prayers?
Surrender and the paralysis seizes you

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Plums and the Boy from Syria
Villanelle

The chroniclers agree it came from ancient Syria,
That tart staple of jam and pie, the Damson plum.
It blooms by the roadside, same time as wisteria.

The chroniclers record how my son fled from quaking Syria.
He wound up a lifeless little boy afloat in the scum,
Drowned after boarding a sinking raft of diphtheria.

All he sought were the roadsides bordered with wisteria,
A land of bread and plums, where he could overcome
That gnawing void of his belly, or murder by bacteria.

The chroniclers agree he had to leave burning Syria.
Strafing and round-ups, bombed-out home, worse to come:
Parents shot, family gone, terror beyond all criteria.

Down the roadsides blooming with wisteria
Drive the ministers, the committees, all aplomb,
To meet and decree, again, an end to this hysteria.

​The rescuers sweep our bodies from the area.
We parents and our kids drown fleeing a gone home.
The chroniclers shrug or push the blame onto Syria.
Bitter plums dot the roadside, among the wisteria.

The Elk in the Glade: The World of Pioneer and Painter Jennie Hicks is a 2022 Publishers Weekly Editors Pick and won 2nd Place at TheBookFest 23. Good Housekeeping is forthcoming in 2024. Publications: The American Journal of Poetry, World Literature Today and more. Anthologies: I Wanna be Loved by You: Poems on Marilyn Monroe (Eric Hoffer Honorable Mention), The Wonders of Winter, and The Strategic Poet craft book. More at www.brucewhitacre.com.

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