The Image of Phuc

Screams on a silent roadway

Brush strokes of red flames searing the sky

Hissing moldering ashes once called homes

Crackle like crushed crickets to the ground

Background soldiers peering lackadaisically at immolation

Without dismay

Lighting cigarettes

Cradling their rifles like suckling infants

She bellows

At the indignity of her clothes

Evaporating in bits of charred cloth and flesh

Trailing behind her--

At her adolescent body aflame,

Of relentless pain

Neurons and dendrites screaming

Thin arms tattooing a desperate dispatch

In a photograph that sealed her in the prison of memory

A hollow O forming her Munchlike face

That photograph rests on kitchen tables

Saddening some munching their toast and jam

Sipping their morning coffees, looking at her naked body

Gratifying others who proclaim it bosh

Pleased that the gooks were suffering

Ice-cream scooped soul torn from the photograph

Vanilla survivor

Takes spider-net building licks at the dripping cone

Only thinking of happiness without hatred

As she runs her fingers over her scarred flesh.

--Sy Roth