Portrait – Part IV
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Poem
Up!
She pushed.
Up!
She was still.
A dead elephant.
So still
she felt the babe’s throbbing.
They could do nothing.
Her children, 5 and 6,
fed and washed —
she wept.
Up! She pushed.
Sweated.
Clawed.
And clenched.
For weeks —
in the liberators’ infirmary —
until a twitch,
a finger, then
an inch,
an hour-long inch,
thicker than the minefields,
deeper than a mountain and its recrossing,
an inch debted to a father,
marshaled to a daughter’s thrum,
oceaned by will,
fibered by sunrise,
a tyrant won’t bend
or murderer breach,
an inch steeper than the ages
and its wrathy yaw.
She’s unbreakable.
previous: Portrait — Part III
more by JUN HUA EA
photograph by JUN HUA EA
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