POLITICAL Poem: If you can’t name it, how can you stop it?, by Nita Jade

consider a room of newborns:
mere days removed from their mothers’ wombs,
mere days of tasting air in their lungs.

consider the promise of an infant, its coo interrupted by a gurgle,
a tiny throat full of maggots and rot. Consider the promise of an infant, its coo interrupted by a
gurgle, a tiny throat full of maggots and rot. Consider an infant, its coo interrupted, a tiny throat
full of maggots and rot. If a NICU full of decomposed babies ain’t enough, then consider

the cowardice of burning families alive as they sleep. Consider the
cowardice of burning families alive as they sleep. Consider setting three generations ablaze as
they attempt to dream. Consider grandmothers shot out of their grandkids’ hands. Consider the
grandmothers shot dead out of their grandkids’ hands. Consider a mother’s mother
bullet-snatched out of her grandbaby’s grasp.

consider the screams, the cries, the curdled blood, the screams,
the cries, the curdled blood, the pleas, the cries, the blood…curdled, the screams. Close your
eyes, and consider an everlasting moment:

a father, his face a twisted wail, clutching the body of his toddler at arms length,
grief-gaped eyes staring at the ash-thick air looming above his toddler’s shoulders, swirling right
where his baby’s face used to be. A father, his face a twisted wail, clutching the body of his
toddler at arms length, grief-gaped eyes staring at the ash-thick air looming above his toddler’s
shoulders, swirling right where his sweet baby’s face used to be. A father, a twisted wail clutching
his infant’s body, grief-gaped eyes staring at ash-thick air looming above his shoulders swirling
right where his sweet baby’s face should be.