When We Decided to Build the Wall

I want an olive tree.
I take yours and I smash it.
I move your home sixty
percent to the left, and I take
the lakes. All the fish
are mine. I send the men
to kill your mothers for
the olive trees and your fish,
now my fish. Your men
send their children into
the stems, the ovules
and filaments, the stamens,
pistils, and trees, back
to the source to consume
my children. I scatter
them wildly. In some ways,
one wall can make a factory,
and when the village
works in your factory,
having a god or not having
When We Decided to
Build the Wall
a god is a matter of profit.
This has a major impact
on how I see flowers and trees.

Copyright © 2009 A.K. Scipioni All rights reserved
from The Literary Review
Reprinted by Verse Daily® with permission