Dixiana by Austin Davis from SECOND CIVIL WAR

DIXIANA
BY AUSTIN DAVIS
FROM
SECOND CIVIL WAR

 
With my hands on my hips
and my right leg perched on a rock,
I piss off a cliff into the woods.
There’s something so simple
 
about letting the worst parts of yourself
grow into something new,
that in this moment, all the injustice
in our world briefly leaves my mind.
 
The image of migrant children
being kicked awake and beaten at the border,
nostalgic of the fetus like lizards afraid to lose
their summer skin, doesn’t even cross my mind.
 
I don’t think about how ICE made girls
strip naked before showering or how these girls
drank toilet water and ate raw meat
in the cages they were forced inside.
 
I certainly don’t think about Dixiana,
the 10-year-old girl whose tired eyes
began to resemble the sheet of aluminum
she slept with instead of a mattress.
 
I just stand between the trees
as the wind licks my back,
arguing with the leaves
as it pushes its way through the pines.
 
The rain begins to fall
and I begin to cry as I zip up my jeans,
considering for a moment
what it would feel like
to forget my mother’s face. 

​Second Civil War is Austin's second release from Moran Press. Paperback copies of his first poetry collection, Cloudy Days, Still Nights are available in the Moran Press store or at Amazon.

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