War Baby
Poetry by Bill Ransom
Cello by Steve Cifka
Food Chain
Eisenhower shot Eddie Slovik for stealing bread
for not killing Germans. After the forty days,
Christ ate what he could — stale bread, vinegar.
Gandhi stopped eating so his people would not kill.
Somewhere a pride of hungry shadows scrapes stone, shifts weight.
Every border, every fence, bulkhead and screen, every curtain
strains to wall out hunger, wall in fine fat babies.
More ingenious than fruit, we fall any season.
Gandhi died with soup in his bowl, shot for rice,
his dead mouth gulping down the free sour wind.
We are the only netted fish who pull our own nets.
We are the only game we harvest we refuse to eat.