by Cheryl Isaac
A cigarette held by shaky fingers
The coffee mug vibrates
Bombs explode in Syria
More dead in Nice
Thunder crashes in Georgia
The nerves tighten their grip
The saucer shatters
Pick up the pieces
The world is broken
Sometimes the shards
Pierce wounded senses
Sometimes shards form
Melancholic mosaics
The coffee settles
The milk curdles
Dregs taste bitter like death
Orlando: those many lives lost
Dallas: revenge turned sour
The aftertaste of all that is wrong
The world is broken
Pretty pieces scattered over
Ugly portraits of destroyed cities
Sometimes shards form
Sorrowed silhouettes
Shadows of all that went wrong
Cheryl Collins Isaac is a former Forbes columnist and a survivor of the Liberian Civil War of the 1990s. She has published short fiction and nonfiction in Ocean State Review, Prime Number Magazine, South Writ Large, and Cosmonaut’s Avenue.
Hawaii Pacific Review 