you know how brittle and thin
the bones of a fried chicken look
after you have bit them bare
and licked them clean
imagine bones like that
bulging beneath the skin
of a seven-year-old girl
who is only still alive because she
unlike forty of her brothers and sisters
was not on the school bus
destroyed the other day
by an expensive star-spangled bomb
her lips look like
they haven’t laughed in years
her skin lame as waxpaper
what might have glowed once
in the bright of Yemen’s sun
is left instead to sag in agony
from those sinless unfed bones
while she goes to sleep
for the final time
a tycoon somewhere
eats well and rests easy
on the dollars that bought
the bombs
not really knowing
the price that has been paid
Amal Hussein was a young child whose photograph was featured in a major New York Times story on the humanitarian crisis in Yemen. There were many horrific photos, but this one caught my eye and inspired this poem. I encourage all readers to seek out organizations to which you may donate in support of Yemen, and more generally to take a stand against the military-industrial complex that facilitates massive arms deals between Western nations and Saudi Arabia, the products of which the latter uses to wage this genocidal war (a war, it must be said, that the United States supports without ever having acquired congressional approval).