USA

leah@mcn.org

An Ethiopian Child


The dark glistening skin of her face
stretches thinly over bones,
the flesh dissolves before my
wounded eyes, and the still-
living skull appears too soon,
her every heart beat a miracle,
her eyes--enormous pools of tears
unshed, suspended in a void
shrieking to be filled.

Blues Song

I’m an old woman singing the blues,
singing of:
joints stiff with pain,
dentures not paid for,
of swallowing a
multitude of
pills expensive as those teeth
no longer my own.

And I’m tired, fed up
with patching my worn body,
and giving doctors their due
as exuberantly
they operate, shove scopes
in every orifice, so
willing they are to pay the price
paid by flesh not their own.

I’m a stubborn old woman,
I will not pay so high a bill
for a few more years of life
no longer my own.

© All Copyright 2001, Leah Leopold.
All Rights Reserved. Printed By Permission.