Two words that strut confident of
their own historical inevitability.
Everyone in time meets them,
though hopefully not both
ringing your door bell
the same day,
unless your name is
Nagasaki or Vietnam;
or you’re the first village
no-one’s ever heard of
successfully abolished
from thirty thousand feet
by a transgender person
pressing a button;
or you’re the first Somali in history
proudly turned into a pile of burning mince
by a drone designed by a woman of colour;
or you’re the wrong type of Australian
whose computer told us the names
of the obliterated
and so can only leave prison
in a fair-trade cardboard box.
Kevin Higgins
Galway, Ireland
