Poem of the Week: Tyehimba Jess

Mercy

the war speaks at night

with its lips of shredded children,

with its brow of plastique

and its fighter jet breath,

and then it speaks at daybreak

with the soft slur of money

unfolding leaf upon leaf.

it speaks between the news

programs in the music

of commercials, then sings

in the voices of a national anthem.

it has a dirty coin jingle in its step,

it has a hand of many lost hands,

a palm of missing fingers,

the stump of an arm that it lost

reaching up to heaven, a foot

that digs a trench for its dead.

the war staggers forward,

compelled, inexorable, ticking.

it looks to me

with its one eye of napalm

and one eye of ice,

with its hair of fire

and its nuclear heart,

and yes, it is so human

and so pitiful as it stands there,

waiting for my hand.

it wants to know my answer.

it wants to know how i intend

to show it out of its misery,

and i only want it

to teach me how to kill.

-Tyehimba Jess

Used by permission.

Tyehimba Jess' first book of poetry, leadbelly, was a winner of the 2004 National Poetry Series. A Cave Canem Alumni, he received a 2004 Literature Fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts, was a 2004-2005 Winter Fellow at the Provincetown Fine Arts Work Center, and won a 2006 Whiting Award. He exhibited his poetry at the 2011 TedX Nashville Conference. He is Assistant Professor of English at College of Staten Island.    

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