Braids

I'm haunted by a certain history
Chasing words
Breaking to cry alone in a room
The little boys pinch my heart the most
With their dirty cold bony fingers
Gazing into their gray-less orbs in the
Stretched parchment of ashen faces
I feel the drop and the prickle of the
Past of a mother

When does the turn strike
Scorpions lop off the heads of growing babies
Clinging under the shawls in the laps of their mothers
Their sick sarcastic laughter sprays spit
Over petrified stones under clothes

The moon and the cross guilty with daggers
Never cleaning fingernails
Dry cracked knuckles caked with black oil
From shoe or gun polish
Soft white hair, ashes, globs, and bone splinters
Crows carrying off ribbons
Pink sea foam and sand fleas eaten by crabs