Task

Jenn Blair

Whenever I 
finish reading  The Plague—a 
terrible sadness comes over me 
til I can only  peel potatoes, taking them from the basket
one by one
steady hands
stripping 
their warm  brown coats 
as I whisper 
tenderly  how tomorrow
I too shall  have landed
white and bare
on the damp
floor of the 
killing fields.

And

the people finally 
came to the plain and it had been 
a long ways they
had been traveling
so there had to be  disappointment.
When they arrived, 
they did so, to 
nothing.  The wind. 
Bone-bits. One 
tooth lacquered  with thin coats of 
plaque. And the 
short woman 
with the bent arm
started howling  aloud. All the foot
steps they had taken. 
Goods shorn. Children
lost.  There is no 
god, no god  she cried 
waving her arms 
til a stone hit her 
mouth and then 
another and another. 
Then everyone left 
anger under the 
open sky for crude 
gardens and houses
of slate, bright seed 
of blood for brown  row after brown  row of forgetting.