CRUELTY

                    by Michael Bazzett 

​Then you walk into a sodden field.
 
It is early and smells of rain and pine.
You sense sun beyond the thin clouds.
The earth mushes beneath each footfall
and buried twigs snap beneath your soles.
 
Soon you are standing before a fence
made of two strands of rusted wire.
Tufts of hair are caught on its barbs,
lifting in the wind like animals.
 
Beyond the fence is a blank fog.
You cannot quite make out those
gathered in the whiteness beyond.
You hear only the clink of cutlery
and a child crying. There will
 
be no gunfire, no serrated light.
The cold will be enough, as always.


​

photo by Leslie Bazzett

​Michael Bazzett’s work has appeared in Ploughshares, The Iowa Review, Guernica, Virginia Quarterly Review, Copper Nickel, and The American Poetry Review. His debut collection, You Must Remember This, received the 2014 Lindquist & Vennum Prize for Poetry from Milkweed Editions. He has two poetry collections arriving in 2017: The Interrogation, (Milkweed) and Our Lands Are Not So Different, (Horsethief Books). He lives in Minneapolis with his wife and two children. You can visit him at michaelbazzett.com.