Pecking Order

Propagating propaganda,
I prop my thoughts against an empty building in Southeast Asia.
I imagine that girl's bruised mango face rotted
underneath fallen walls in Mumbai, India.

Napalm asphalt assaults her clavicles;
her face short-circuits as it caves in.
For a minute, I am with her, beneath her table
as bombs bite at our eardrums and the pull of the Earth sends us into a spin.

The horizon never looked so frozen on a summer day.

Tourists snap photos of her exotic fruit,
her eggplant eyes collecting fluid.
"What a pity," they cluck
for the benefit of their own ears.

I'd like to believe that maybe she could have been
an astronaut
or a physician
or maybe a lawyer.

But probably she'd be stealing our blue-collar jobs
and answering frantic American questions about computers
as the tourists breathe a sigh of relief
at the sight of a torn kurta and a spine severed beyond repair.