Shipping crates for houses, some stamped
Fragile. Handle with Care.
Others tattooed with numbers,
a red arrow pointing to a gap in the roof.
At night, starlight for lamps,
sprinkled like salt over the plain.
There, a mother cooks in the moment,
wishing for chimneys, a sky full of smoke,
a pan to fry fish—her kitchen is now
only a gaping pit in the ground.
She mixes honeysuckle and water in tin cups
for her children to drink at the table
of prayers; gives her daughter a tube
of red lipstick so she can taste
its cherry sweetness; then dresses them all
in bird feathers and beads at bedtime.
Ingenuity, they say, is not obsolete
in wartime. There are labels attached
to the most obvious—a crate is a crate,
bird feathers are bird feathers—
until removed—surrendering
to what becomes an uncompromising condition.
