A man with sieve——
a kind I have only seen used to make flour
smooth enough for sponge, birthday cake
——sifts for his children’s bones and
those of his pregnant wife in Gaza.
In Iran, people ignite like candles in the street——
what great retribution I would need if I had
to claw sieve rake excavate rinse & collect
I’ll just say, someone has been doing
a fine job ensuring no more birthdays
someone deserves a raze.
Mel Sherrer is a writer, educator, and life coach from Las Vegas, Nevada. She received her B.F.A. from Hollins University in Roanoke, Virginia, and her M.F.A. in Poetry from Converse University in Spartanburg, South Carolina. Mel’s debut chapbook Vice Grip was published by Alien Buddha press. She has poetry in Poet Lore, Zone 3 Press, Lavender Review, Identity Theory, Blood Tree Literature, and others. Mel serves as an Associate Editor for Sage Cigarettes Magazine and South 85 Journal. Find her work and more information at www.MelSherrer.com. Her favorite revenge is the story of Akasha from the book Queen of the Damned (1988), by Anne Rice in which Akasha, the first vampire, is awakened from her spellbound slumber by the eerie music of rockstar vampire Lestat. Upon her awakening, she kills her mate, Enkil, and recruits Lestat to help her rule the world. She attempts to create a utopian, matriarchal society by slaughtering most of humanity’s male population. Her favorite feud from history includes a conflict between the American colonists and my ancestral people, the Blackfoot tribe Kainai, of the Blackfeet nation. During the early 1800s the Blackfoot engaged in a feud with settler fur trappers called the “Conflict with Fur Trappers.” The Blackfoot actively resisted American trappers, whom they called “Big Knives,” in the upper Missouri River country. They successfully attacked trapping parties, destroyed forts, and burned supplies to protect their hunting grounds and reduce competition, effectively stopping American expansion into their territory for years.
