From Woman in a Tree

The Sunday Emergency

On a bloody Sunday journey

At the emergency room of a hospital

In a town called Manzini

In a country called Swaziland

The weekend plays soccer

On the bodies of women.

The suffering kills me inside.

Seen everywhere, it invades me—

Women limping, hips dislocated,

Heads bandaged,

My niece with no eye, but a marble in the socket,

My niece dead, nothing but a memory.

When does it end, this beating of women?

Answer me! My anxiety fails me,

For I am lunar, I will go mad

And run away in the night, crying murder all over.

Somebody is mad and not me;

Somebody inside me sees.

I just speak for all,

I do.

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