Poets Against War continues the tradition of socially engaged poetry by creating venues for poetry as a voice against war, tyranny and oppression.
Laurel Snyder
29 years old
Iowa City, IA
Long Walk: the Day Before
A man wanders a few days in the desert with some goats, returns to find his Nile red, discovers his fish floating, and still doubts the skies— Because he can
always drink his milk and eat his bread and wait for the (Sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn’t) brief respite— There are figs and wine and then
some snarling— the wilderness inside the walls— an entire threshing of ice. Timid frogs loose their fear and entrench. A thin camel stops where he is standing. Locusts drift
like a winter of humming wings. The filth crawls in to chew the yellow sores that make the women sick and the women turn— stomachs turn. This isn’t death yet, but then— the darkness—
the pitch t—he abyss that begins where a body ends— Nothing a candle can fix— Nothing a hand can move inside of— the mind keeps stumbling— If there was a storm, he could blame this
on the storm but there isn’t a storm— In the pitch, he can only think of the insides of things— Almost— a man in this darkness might pray to see his son die— almost.
