Challenging Poetry

Equatorial Guinea: thoughts on twenty percent

how many angels
touch their mother’s dreams
and leave,
their passage a constant
murmur on the wind.

one in five,
dead.

my sister has five babies.
four living,
and the ache of the one
shapes our lives.
we think of him,
and wonder what might have been.

how strange to think
that far away,
in Central Africa,
my sister’s loss is a normal—
that all mothers
must play such odds,
hoping their angels remain,
fearing loss.

the air must be thick
with them,
whispering their absence
the taste of salt
in their mother’s throats.

line count: 26

Author's Note ▶︎

I found it hard to find a place to write Equatorial Guinea. There are no world heritage sites. There are no easily found legends or myths (if I dug enough, I could have found something, of course) and I'm not interested in politics. But one thing I noticed was that the infant mortality rate (as listed in Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Equatorial_Guinea ) was 20% or one in five. That made me think of my sister, who has five children, for of whom are still living. And this is where it ended.