In her gates (immovable and deep founded)
at her doors (battered and burst at the bolts)
among the nations (her king and her princes)
her law and her prophets (is not and did not)
find a vision from the LORD (not and not).
They silent, they sat, they on the ground— they
elders of Zion’s daughter. They
spattered ash on their head. They
only in sackcloth like autumn scrubgrass. They
muffle-thumped grey pates against the earth.
My eyes bitchslapped—wrung tears, swollen, hard. My
gut suckerpunched— slipped, rolling, spasmodic bolus. My
entrails out— a joker’s smile, gaping, peristalsis on the floor. My
people’s daughters— hardened, drained, sucked past repentance; My
now entitled toddler snot-whining insurrection in the open square.
They cocked an eye at their mother,
“Where is the wheat, the wine?”
— while they whipped up a riot
at the king’s gate (like walking wounded)
— while they breathed their last
into mommy’s imploded bosom.
Lamentations 2:9-12