Selektion: The Painted Girl

like a negative bled dark left too long in searing light

it’s blue all blue and the blurred child walks amid

a street of bodies her scant dress white lips pursed

listening perhaps to the blue flute of a distant piper

the dead in coats and scarves it’s cold but her feet

bare arms held from her sides and everything’s blue

her head injured head gauze-wrapped no face

blinded here but is it worse than the other place

where she knelt wearing white panties dark eyes

masked by her own cupped hands black-and-white

here the only blues inside where to go what to do

but whose child is this who will confess piper

whose child turned monochrome how will she

bear up pay why must we select our children