Emma Anderson
3: Becoming Another
the elusive purpose of awareness
So,
i can never forget
forty thousand kid soldiers
AK’s bridled round their necks
hit with nine wise crimes
and bullets
and shrapnel flying wildly.
One shard ricocheted off a young mother’s
back as she ran away from the bush,
and when she untied her baby sling in the morning,
there was a half-masked, bloody bundle
of a swaddled body without a head.
Even the dying know how to while away time,
sink into the void,
and conquer the fall.
Borders make killing easy.
“this is mine now
give it back!”
Bureaucracy makes dying easy.
“just like that!”
States tick Drones tick
States drone on,
moved by mass lack of attention,
misleading representations of
the incomprehensibly full scope of
the multiplicitous reality we coexist in.
I walked down five flights of stairs
to see what escalators have to do with structural violence.
And why the babies in Uganda
are the stars of American poverty porn.
The difference between charity and activism
is the object of obligation.
There is an Internally Displaced Persons Camp in the
Democratic Republic of the Congo—
where the largest conflict since World War II
has killed five million people since 1996.
And eight out of ten women are victims of rape.
So, while the conflict mineral, coltan
—used in almost every cell phone—
becomes a politicized resource
generating wealth for warlords
through the fracturing of society
for three-dozen years,
the elusive purpose of awareness
once again, recedes.