Commas
MARY MCCOLLEY
The olive trees, silver-flanked, glimmering in the wind,
turned their twigs to script, their leaves to punctuation:
many flights of commas, of waiting,
waiting, for checkpoints, for permits, for salaries, for judges,
for fathers home from prison, for boys to lose the haunted look,
for boys to bleed out on the sidewalk, for the winter rains
to scrub away the children’s blood, for cats to birth another mewling litter
to paw through trash-cans and huddle in the hollows
of buildings left unfinished, cement blocks and wires an
acupuncture upon the sky, never a permission granted, never
the right to a home, comma after comma
in the lives held at gunpoint, year after year, after year.
MARY MCCOLLEY is a writer and poet originally from Maine. She has wandered and worked for a number of years in France, Thailand, and Palestine. Her pastimes include killing lobsters and selling street art.
