Find the Children
by Holly Guran
Ease the children down, hungry and cold.
Bring quilts to cover them.
Bring hot broth. Spoon it into their small moon mouths.
Be careful. Blow gently on each spoonful.
Around the children are crumbled walls.
Around the children are men holed up with weapons.
Around the children are too many demons.
If the children survive, the demons will ghost their dreams,
gallop and crash through their nightmares.
If the children survive, they will join those who destroy,
or find a way to bring solace.
The moon rises over the place where they lie.
The Daily
by Holly Guran
Sarajevo, November, 1992
On the evening news, a woman editor
and a pale man, editor-in-chief,
speak with McNeil. The man's health
is failing, and he will return
home where the others,
Croat, Muslim, Serb,
work below the building now
a scarred black grid, mostly gone.
Imagine their nightly labor—candlelit
to save electricity for the printing—as they forge
accuracies from the rubble and fight a craving
for warmth, hot supper, sleep.
Paper's short. Only 10,000 run. Reporters
make the first drop, truck drivers no longer willing.
How does McNeil interview them without sobbing?
Before so many hungry months, history
may draw them both down,
and she says, "This is the city
where we've lived and worked
together--Muslim, Croat, Serb--we
shall go on. . ."
beneath the war
toiling in the candlelit basement until first light
and the circling doves.
Holly Guran, author of River of Bones (Iris Press) and the chapbooks River Tracks (Poets Corner Press) and Mothers' Trails (Noctiluca Press), earned a Massachusetts Cultural Council award (2012), and is a member of Jamaica Pond Poets. Her work has appeared in journals including Poet Lore, Poetry East, Hawai'i Pacific Review, Borderlands, Worcester Review, and Salamander. Holly resides in Boston with her husband, Phil, and their dog, Ginger.
by Holly Guran
Ease the children down, hungry and cold.
Bring quilts to cover them.
Bring hot broth. Spoon it into their small moon mouths.
Be careful. Blow gently on each spoonful.
Around the children are crumbled walls.
Around the children are men holed up with weapons.
Around the children are too many demons.
If the children survive, the demons will ghost their dreams,
gallop and crash through their nightmares.
If the children survive, they will join those who destroy,
or find a way to bring solace.
The moon rises over the place where they lie.
The Daily
by Holly Guran
Sarajevo, November, 1992
On the evening news, a woman editor
and a pale man, editor-in-chief,
speak with McNeil. The man's health
is failing, and he will return
home where the others,
Croat, Muslim, Serb,
work below the building now
a scarred black grid, mostly gone.
Imagine their nightly labor—candlelit
to save electricity for the printing—as they forge
accuracies from the rubble and fight a craving
for warmth, hot supper, sleep.
Paper's short. Only 10,000 run. Reporters
make the first drop, truck drivers no longer willing.
How does McNeil interview them without sobbing?
Before so many hungry months, history
may draw them both down,
and she says, "This is the city
where we've lived and worked
together--Muslim, Croat, Serb--we
shall go on. . ."
beneath the war
toiling in the candlelit basement until first light
and the circling doves.
Holly Guran, author of River of Bones (Iris Press) and the chapbooks River Tracks (Poets Corner Press) and Mothers' Trails (Noctiluca Press), earned a Massachusetts Cultural Council award (2012), and is a member of Jamaica Pond Poets. Her work has appeared in journals including Poet Lore, Poetry East, Hawai'i Pacific Review, Borderlands, Worcester Review, and Salamander. Holly resides in Boston with her husband, Phil, and their dog, Ginger.