They smashed her head against the wall.
They took the head I held in my hand.
Smaller than a sandwich.
Perfect pink beast.
They took that same head.
They smashed my baby’s head against the wall
for some bullshit imperial claim I’d made.
They stabbed your mother, my love.
But I didn’t make her.
I made you.
They took your head.
They slammed your head against the wall.
I held your head.
It smelled like yogurt in springtime.
Amy Lawless is the author of Noctis Licentia (Black Maze Books 2008), a four poem pamphlet from Greying Ghost Press, and the forthcoming chapbook Elephants in Mourning ([sic] Detroit). This poem is from a manuscript called Empire. She was awarded a 2011 fellowship from the New York Foundation for the Arts. She is from Boston but lives in Brooklyn.
*Photo courtesy of | spoon |.