Alicia Cole

After Hiroshima

I hope to see

                                                                                                                               fresh
                                                                                   sakura free of cesium
                                                                                                                                                                               a child’s 
                  hands
                                                                                                     placing dolls
                                                         in the pinked boughs
                                                                     of festival bowers
                                                                               free of nuclear showers
                                                                                                                                                             china faces
                                                                                                              uncracked
                                                thirsty trunks                               drinking  
                                                             clean water
                                                                               (so many generations
                                                                                           unharried growth
                                                                                           since Hiroshima,
                                                                                                       yet so much wasted
                                                                                            in the earth’s protestant
                                                                                                        heave as though
                                                                                            spirits their mouths sprung
                                                                                                        from Torii gates
                                                                                                        snapped a spume
                                                                                            of rotten ground).

Alicia Cole is a writer and visual artist living in Huntsville, AL. Her poetry has appeared in Paper Nautilus and Thick With Conviction, and is forthcoming in The Clockwise Cat and Love & Ensuing Madness. You can find more about her on Goodreads, https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/6470571.Alicia_Cole, at her publishing press, Priestess & Hierophant, www.priestessandhierophant.com, and at www.facebook.com/Aliciacolewriter.
 
 
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