Today's poem is by Luisa Muradyan

Ant Farm
       

It's midnight again and I'm watching the ants
in my son's farm go about their day.
Sometimes I like to give them names
though I often worry I can't keep track of who
is who, or is it whom? Susan and Ted, maybe Barbara
or Dan. I often joke to my husband that if he isn't sure
about the name of one of my relatives he should guess
Natasha or Oleg, Boris or Bogdan, all of them interchangeable
I'm speaking of course of the ants though lately there has been
so much death I don't know myself anymore. I think it was
Barbara who lost her lover somewhere in a tunnel and carried his body
through the field in mourning. Maybe it was Ted, or maybe it was Dan
who my son often notes has the most energy, perhaps the most to prove.
I'm tired of proving to you why Natasha deserves to live, why Oleg once
saved a baby bird who fell out of its nest, though its mother abandoned it
eventually. The birds eye view of Mariupol is trees and dirt, no one knows
how many bodies are silenced underneath. Back in my son's room I sit
like a god and watch them work, wondering if they can see me or
if they believe I am there. If I ever need to destroy them, I will
justify it somehow. Cruelty has its purposes.
Maybe they escaped and wanted to make their home
in mine. Maybe I can dig up old dirt, write in a moral lesson.
But I have nothing to teach them, they know too much of
tragedy and what it is to wait for the end

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Copyright © 2024 Luisa Muradyan All rights reserved
from Black Warrior Review
Reprinted by Verse Daily® with permission