Blood Promise
for the Afghan girls
Even bloodied, a fire burns.
Red waters constrain what can be cleansed.
Child-bride prayer between virgin breaths.
Morning of Motherhood grinds.
Married the fist, not a palm. Never
disappoint, or face the father’s first stone.
Cauterized intuition. To undo the Word,
to undo the syllables, causes the wound.
She aspired to be a shepherd girl.
Succumbs to what comes next. Exile pure,
beyond dowry scraps. A low wind
twines her dark tress, binds knowledge.
Claimed by her keeper and unholy goats—
bloodshot eyes flickered with gnats.
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Image credit: A photograph [by Steve McCurry] of Sharbat Gula, “Afghan Girl,” was featured on the front cover of the June 1985 issue of National Geographic Magazine.
His second poetry collection, That Rain We Needed (2016, Press 53), was a nominee for the Roanoke-Chowan Award as one of North Carolina’s best poetry collections of 2016. He was awarded an “Emerging Artist’s Grant” from the Winston-Salem Arts Council to publish his first collection Changes of Venue (Mount Olive Press); and is a Pushcart nominee.
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