Violence bears no apostrophes

Spectral land—you are bleeding hollow;
flesh and bone
at the precipice 
of ruin,
of cold erosion,
of televised despair: the lynching of a naked man,
there is no easier way to word this—
this is the breaking of our land.
Violence bears no apostrophes, we rot in dog years.
It is history, euthanised.
It is declarative
of what has been sold
through the slow death 
of conscience—what does it inherit?
who would it rather be
in an alternate tomorrow
disintegrating
beyond this civilisational scar.
we build past these eulogies—mourning this bleeding soil,
and if silence remembers the ways in which
it is haunted—if it remembers at all,
may it forever haunt 
the death of the soul.
This haunting of a womb half-given
and half-owed 
must remember
the carrying. The invisibles
are the sacred of the earth. 
 

Snata Basu is a writer based in Dhaka, Bangladesh. Her poetry has appeared on numerous literary platforms including The Opiate, Visual Verse: An Online Anthology of Art and Words, and Small World City.