operation mercury, 1941
BY SOPHIA GALIFIANAKIS
Silence falls, surrenders. Limb to limb,
Green Devils hang from trees
like the first figs of the season.
This is the mystery of hunger.
Under a cave’s blue arch,
a girl squats by a woman
who cradles cloth in her arms.
Cradles and talks and talks.
The girl watches the woman
chew and spit bread to the lips
of the small still flesh now pressed
against her dry breast. The girl
shoves dirt into her doll’s mouth.
Someone chants prayers or shouts
of artillery chime outside. Oh God
the girl hides her eyes,
and a sweet scent rises in the heat.
She curls into her butter dress. Loose
in the thievery of a dream the woman
opens her arms to reach a branch
where an olive still clings,
beckoning to be. She rents
the garments of the tree. The pit
slides down the globe of her fist
to the parched and naked earth.
Nature is desperate with the weight
of so many men. And the girl
wakes the woman. She remembers
the sound of ripe fruit pruned by the evening,
the sound of the mountain receiving them.
