Emily Arnold-Fernández
Black and white and red all over
The joke's so dried up, it fits below the fold
like a half-used paintbox left in the Florida sun,
pigments parched and cracked. Brutal math
is all that's left: ‘Two victims.’ ‘Not students.’
The white space leaves ‘only’ and ‘at least’
to our imagination. Less than Parkland,
less than UCSB. Less than two hundred
and thirty-eight men kneeling face down,
heads shaved in a black box prison, tattoos
an impressionist take on red targets
water-colored by a would-be king. That's how
I know we're at war: Our brushes lie stiff,
our eyes run dry as we do caustic sums
on our fingers, no moisture left to soften us,
no palette fit to paint the souls we’ve lost
faster than the news can cry their fates.
Emily Arnold-Fernández is an immigrant from California who now lives in Scotland. In a previous life, she founded the global refugee human rights organisation Asylum Access. Her recent poems appear or are forthcoming in Cordite, Aeos, Cantos, Thirteen Bridges and Black Bough among others. She tends to live on islands. (Instagram: @emilyarnoldfernandez)