Side Effects (poem)
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Side Effects
Rain is crawling over the roof
like a millipede, scuttling.
Out on the highway across
a marsh, crash, one scream.
Sirens. That would have
wakened me if I'd been able
to sleep. I dreamt of war
and it brought me stark awake
explosions and torn limbs
like the parts of discarded
bloody dolls on the hard
baked ground, dead goats,
cats, dogs, songbirds trapped
in the hell we make. We
forget whole ecosystems
are blown apart and gone.
War is for making a few rich
while many perish, but we count
only dead soldiers not all
those who get in our way.
Copyright 2008 Marge Piercy. Marge Piercy is an acclaimed
author and teacher whose most recent poetry collection is The
Crooked Inheritance (Alfred A. Knopf).
