Community Outreach information

[JollyJane]

Reading this poem below, I felt many of us in West County might want to know this information. And while I was taking the time to post, other
"vital to SC community" information can be found in many great books that are at https://www.bookpubco.com/

(This is a Public Service Announcement by me, not paid in any way)

JJ
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Axis Featured Poem: "Let Them Eat Yellowcake"
By Rupert Fike
Aug 8, 2005

Let Them Eat Yellowcake

For a late-sleeping American
in a West African village,
what wakes one each morning
are whump, whump, whumps -
millet pounded in the courtyard pestle
by girls singing, even occasionally
clapping, their wood mortars
pausing in mid-air to share that joy
before the crushing downstroke,
what meals grain into pre-flour,
what will be boiled, poured, cooled,
what will become today's Toh,
pudding finger-food, staff of life
dipped in eggplant/palm oil sauce
then raised to lowered mouths
while smoky mopeds whine by,
roosters cry, and goats nanny
in tribal dust under mango trees.

But in Niger, this saddest summer,
there are few whumps
(millet is scarce--first drought,
then locusts--Biblical plagues).
And the babies can't swat flies--
they just cry ... and die,
same as cattle after eating sand,
same as their Fulani herders,
herdless now, who dive down wells--
while leaders of "developed" nations,
who only saw Niger as uranium piles,
remain silent, air-conditioned.
And, as countless flies buzz
over blistered Sahel lips,
that silence translates as,
"Let them eat yellowcake!"

© Copyright 2005 by AxisofLogic.com

Editor's Note: When told that the peasants had no bread, Marie Antoinette replied: "Let them eat cake!" "Yellowcake" is a uranium concentrate, falsely reported to be exported from Niger to Iraq--and cited by the U.S. as a pretext for the War. -- Eds.

Rupert Fike has had fiction and poetry in Rosebud, Natural Bridge, Georgetown Review, Snake Nation Review, Cumberland Poetry Review, Borderlands and elsewhere. A Pushcart Prize nominee, he edited Voices From The Farm, accounts of life on a 1970s commune, now available in paperback. Contact Rupert Fike

published online at: https://www.axisoflogic.com/artman/p...le_19520.shtml
ALSO SEE:
https://homepage.mac.com/leperous/PhotoAlbum1.html