“KM4” Poems & Drawings by Tom Sleigh and Michael Hafftka

Lake water

in smooth still sun moves in

and out of synch

with the violin

playing at the villa—

the bow attacking the strings looks like a hand

making some frantic motion to come closer, go away—

it’s hard to say what’s being said,

who’s being summoned from the dead,

from red sand drifting

across the sheen of the shining floor.

The pianist’s hands taking wing to hover above a chord

become the flight path

of a marabou stork crashing down

on carrion, the piano levitating up and up

above red sand that it starts to float across

the way a camel’s humps

far off in the mirage rise and fall fall and rise

until mirage overbrims itself

and everything into its shimmering disappears.

And the ones who died the day before,

blown up at the crossroads at KM4,

scanning the notice board for scholarship results,

put their fingers to their names as the onlookers applaud.