June 1942

Tonight
I swallow the waning
moon     where it unspools
in my belly like a

white ribbon
lettered with Lidice’s fate.
Every bended knee

broken
every tongue extracted     every
outstretched hand severed

at the wrist.
Plundered cemeteries and burned-
out buildings tilled under.

Mothers
and children sent into shadow
and all the men opened like flowers.

Elegy for Lidice, Czechoslovakia by Pamela Anderson


Photo of by Kumudini