The Brochure

The Brochure

Previously printed in Out Loud Anthology III by Midwest Writing Center, 2009

Waiting for the graphics to load

Intent on the purpose and audience

Choosing well is important

If the message is to be received

And understood.

Slowly, the images appear

From top to bottom,

Almost apologetic,

Rolling out in black and white images

Stark and stoic pain and horror

Trapped forever on servers.

The story told in uncaptioned images,

Pieces of the puzzle surfacing stubbornly

Tenacity in the eyes of haunted, starved faces

So like other starved faces.

Shaved heads

And skin sucked taut over sharp bones

Offer little individuality,

Limbs so thin

Bones must be hollow,

But not enough to fly away.

Grounded in hatred

They speak for themselves

Willing and unwilling witnesses

To what happens when

Humanity is sucked out

Like the parasite it seeks to dislodge.

Each image is worse

Than the last.

Mothers with little children,

Their anguish

Too much,

Implicit in the image,

The parent’s dilemma,

Smother the child

And end what comes next,

Or hope for escape or invisibility.

Close-ups of wagons full of bodies

Naked limbs splayed out

In mute acceptance.

God is on leave.

The young women

Of a proud, strict culture

Untried, dream

Of a boyfriend’s arms

And sweet kisses

On summer holidays

Suffer the indignity

Of being tossed onto the heap

Male and female bodies

Touch

Without warmth

Without introduction.

The cruel complexity

Of pick-up-stick tumbled bones

In the mass graves

Makes way for the next firing line victims.

The scent of fear is a tangible thing,

As real as the fetid odor of burning calcium

Hanging in the air.

Ignore the faces

wailing mutely from the grave.

Choose graphics to avoid offending.

Fix the margins.

Work on the color scheme.

Add a few famous quotations.

Revise and edit.

Send to the printer with a single click,

But they are not forgotten. They have

A voice strong enough to drown out

The hatred of those not pictured.

Their passive testimony

Lives with strength and a purity

Borne of fire.

They will not be denied.

                        —Katherine M. Searle