Social Injustice ~ 3 Poems by J.Lois Diamond
Social Injustice ~ 3 Poems
By J. Lois Diamond
Narration by J.Lois Diamond
The Bodies
The Bodies, an
exhibit at South St.
Seaport shows
cadavers all decked out on
lawn chairs.
They sip
formaldahyde soaked
Pina Coladas through
straws of golden light
then jumping, screwing
in the air,
high five each other in
fanciful ascents, fling footballs
Yet where were these bodies bought?
From China, museum says
not donated by deceased but
are “unclaimed corpses”
no doubt sold from
Falun gong’s labor camps,
from stolen graves
of religious dissidents
And what do we learn
from seeing the specimens?
how a drop of blood
flows through veins,
how feces becomes brown
from bilirubin (red) and biliverdin (green)
born from liver’s bile ?
How frightfully long is the
phrenic nerve until it
snaps on to diaphragm?
No I think the monks were right
to sit on vulture mountains,
or speculate on skeleton bones
suspended on grizzly hooks since
this fossilized farce is monstrous.
Where is Bess?
Where is Bess,
Ms. Myerson on
a day when
shoppers are shot
in France
buying pickles in a
Kosher Paris shop
before Shabbos?
In forty-five she is
crowned Miss America
as the war comes to a halt
Some Americans blame the Jews
for U.S. presence in
the bloody battles
Then stark images of the
camps are splashed on newspaper
pages
Bess alone gives them pride
Today Bibi and Israel’s Ambassador
both travel to Paris
inviting French Jews
to flee, to save their skins
to sail for Israel
the land that is always
at war
where Jews are unwelcome
by Palestinians who have lost
their beloved land
They demand that the
Jews go back to
where they came from
and so
they vanish
Where is Bess and her crown?
Not in the Seine
Not in the Rhine
Not in the Volga
Perhaps in the sea, in
the very dead sea
floating all alone
in the mud
with her crown
On Thursday Afternoon
There is a whoosh,
then a loud popping sound
that shatters the ears of
those sipping Saki
Then a shower of screams, flames and
desperate climbs out
of windows onto
the street
Three buildings gone
A giant hole on the block
and a search for remains ensues
Two men blown apart
Eleven buildings evacuated
A hundred homeless
All from a seedy contractor
who siphoned the gas and
hid his tracks as
he swiftly rescued the
land-lady’s son