nightmares, little girls with rosy heads blasting off
into the night sky, smoking fireworks like a fat man
smokes a cigar, exploding like white dandelions
rosy, blooming out like roses, a century and half later,
when hong kong came back to china,
its prodigal daughter.
chicago, red white blue
flag coloured
the boy next to me whispered,
"it's just like war"
deafened by their anthem
the pounding and ringing and smoke drifting
pale against the night, kosovo's war dimmed,
but the soldiers wandered the streets.
we ushered in the new year with guns
pointed high and proud,
listening from out balcony
(piled high with wood my mother chopped
to heat our home)
the celebrations: shouting and crackles of gunpowder
machine guns spitting,
rising like the hum of a bee hive
and hovering in the air,
coating the city in honey.
