The
Brochure
Waiting for the graphics to load
Intent on the purpose and audience
Choosing well is important
If the message is to be received
And understood.
Slowly, the images appear
From top to bottom,
Almost apologetic,
Rolling out in black and white images
Stark and stoic pain and horror
Trapped forever on servers.
The story told in uncaptioned images,
Pieces of the puzzle surfacing stubbornly
Tenacity in the eyes of haunted, starved faces
So like other starved faces.
Shaved heads
And skin sucked taut over sharp bones
Offer little individuality,
Limbs so thin
Bones must be hollow,
But not enough to fly away.
Grounded in hatred
They speak for themselves
Willing and unwilling witnesses
To what happens when
Humanity is sucked out
Like the parasite it seeks to dislodge.
Each image is worse
Than the last.
Mothers with little children,
Their anguish
Too much,
Implicit in the image,
The parent’s dilemma,
Smother the child
And end what comes next,
Or hope for escape or invisibility.
Close-ups of wagons full of bodies
Naked limbs splayed out
In mute acceptance.
God is on leave.
The young women
Of a proud, strict culture
Untried, dream
Of a boyfriend’s arms
And sweet kisses
On summer holidays
Suffer the indignity
Of being tossed onto the heap
Male and female bodies
Touch
Without warmth
Without introduction.
The cruel complexity
Of pick-up-stick tumbled bones
In the mass graves
Makes way for the next firing line victims.
The scent of fear is a tangible thing,
As real as the fetid odor of burning calcium
Hanging in the air.
Ignore the faces
wailing mutely from the grave.
Choose graphics to avoid offending.
Fix the margins.
Work on the color scheme.
Add a few famous quotations.
Revise and edit.
Send to the printer with a single click,
But they are not forgotten. They have
A voice strong enough to drown out
The hatred of those not pictured.
Their passive testimony
Lives with strength and a purity
Borne of fire.
They will not be denied.
