Here is a poem I wrote a short while ago.
How Close is Distant
What if the woman across the street
slapped her toddler’s tear-streaked face,
a policeman stopped the car next to ours
and yanked a black teenager from behind the wheel?
What if our city’s newspaper printed a story
we knew was a lie,
our boss made a dirty joke about
our colleague in the lunchroom?
What if our country’s new law
threatened the life of our neighbor,
threatened the life of the family
we knew we’d never meet?
What if a six year-old girl was raped
in a country we never heard of,
a sixteen year-old boy was tortured
in the school down the road?
What if our visas were denied because of a joke
we made on Facebook,
we looked out our hotel window
and saw smoke from a distant bomb?
What if an ancient cemetery was vandalized
our grandmother’s grave was dug up
our church was burnt down
our friend’s child was stolen
our father was murdered as the family looked on?
What then?
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