Elizabeth Kirkpatrick-Vrenios

As if the World were Made of Nothing but Hunger

                        At least two and a half million Ukrainians have fled their country in what the United Nations has called                                                   
the fastest growing refugee crisis since World War II.                                                                                                  
-New York Times

before jackscrew and rust
before the terrible steaming coats
of guns       before the river had edges

we had light at our edges     we will start with
ravens that soar and drop into dark rivers
we will start with music through curtains

its hard to recognize the music of these last days
of life before you count and count the reams
of empty space      rubble  and crush

a town torn      crushed
birds unsettled           mountains shift
light fills voids      echoes drape trees

death echoes like a junked tanker
like a cry     the size of a single boy
crushed by the stones     the color of bad teeth

the color of release     as old as ambush      
as young as mud     we can be made to kneel 
our knees folding into knees

fold into a river of endless bodies
currents curl     constrict and           drop
a coiled bridge between worlds    

the veil thin between our dying world
and that unknown beyond
this daylight chamber

balancing in a shaft of light
a socket not quite empty
one eye illuminated     one eclipsed

Elizabeth Kirkpatrick-Vrenios' award-winning chapbook, Special Delivery, was published in 2016, and her second, Empty the Ocean with a Thimble by Word Tech Communications.  Twice nominated for a pushcart prize, she has poems published in various anthologies and journals including Stories of Music, The Poeming Pigeon, Love Notes from Humanity, Stories of Music, American Journal of Poetry, Cumberland River Review, The Feminine Collective, The Kentucky Review, Unsplendid, Edison Literary review, Passager, and NILVX. She is a Professor Emerita from American University, artistic director of the Redwoods Opera in Mendocino, California, a member of international Who’s Who of Musicians, and has spent much of her life performing as a singing artist across Europe and the United States.