Kali Collins- Two Poems

Silence

There is silence in the words we say.

Buried under piles of red clothed

backs and duct-taped mouths.

Streets lined with blurred out figures—

their faces turned away—and lying under

the garbage is the silent generations.

The kids who saw more backs and hateful

slurs than kind eyes and outstretched hands.

There is silence in their downturned mouths,

That we chose to overlook. In the crowds that

gather around the young boy who is too

weak to defend himself. In the not-so-

innocent bystanders, who gape and laugh,

but whose mouths remained nailed shut—

even as his body loses life…

There is silence in the way I bite my lip and turn away.

Forced Freedom

You have the freedom,

to recognize the silence

encompassed in the early

morning mist as it drags across

the Earth. To change the song

that burdens the ear, buried

in the church bells strange

clamor as they screech and

howl to the wind. But

there is no freedom in bending

the flat world to fit a sphere.