Although words such as "massacre" and "victim" and "buried" help us to understand the effects of disaster and injustice, sometimes the most vivid descriptions of horrific events are painted with numbers -- 6 million slain, 4-year-old girl raped, 11 days without food. One of the strong poetic voices of the twentieth century was June Jordan (1936-2002). Works in her collection, Kissing God Goodbye (Anchor Books, 1997), speak out for all victims, in Baghdad or Belfast, in Lebanon or Algeria. In the following poem from that 1997 collection, Jordan uses numbers to heighten her portrayal of tragedy in Bosnia.
Bosnia Bosnia by June Jordan
Too bad
there is no oil
between her legs
the 4-year-old Muslim girl and
her 5-year-old sister
and the 16-year-old babysitter
and the 20-year-old-mother of that 4-year-old / that
Muslim child gang raped
from dawn to dark to time become damnation
Too bad
there is no oil
between her legs
Too bad there is no oil
between Sbrenica and Sarajevo
and in-between the standing of a life
and genocide
Too bad
there is no oil
Too bad
there is no oil
between her legs
the woman in Somalia
who weighs 45 pounds and
who has buried village elders and
who has buried village children
who weighed even less
than she weights after so many days
of hunger gaping open
to the flies
Too bad
there is no oil
in South Central L. A.
and in between the beaten men and beatup women
and in between the African and Asian throwaways
and in between the Spanish and the English speaking
homeless
and in between the dealers and the drugged
and in between the people and criminal police
too bad
there is no oil
Too bad
there is no oil
between her legs
that four-year-old Muslim girl
Too bad
there is no oil
between her legs
More work by June Jordan can be found at the Poetry Foundation website -- there we also find a host of poems and other resource materials for celebration of Black History Month. A Jordan poem that I particularly enjoy is "Problems of Translation: Problems of Language."
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