St. Anthony's Church
in Questa, New Mexico,
erected a plaque
on a pedestal
outside its doors
to honor all the dead
"unborn children"
of the world.
I looked in vain
for a corresponding plaque
to honor the bone-thin
babies starving or dying from HIV
in South Central, L.A.,
in Albuquerque or Santa Fe,
in barrios below the border,
the Sudan, the streets of
Calcutta or North Korea,
the armless children
in Iraq, the legless soldiers of
all countries, the untold numbers
of grieving parents, brothers, sisters,
& lovers.
I looked & found
lovely yellow & orange wild flowers
growing in a white planter shaped
like a cross.
--Clifton Snider
I wrote this poem on a residence fellowship at The Helene Wurlitzer Foundation of New Mexico, Taos, in the summer of 2004. It was published in Chiron Review, #81, winter 2005, in its GLBT issue.
Chiron Review Press published my book of poetry, The Alchemy of Opposites, and I am pleased to have been published in its pages since its beginnings as the Kindred Spirit in 1982. Needless to say, I recommend this issue highly.
"St. Anthony's Church" has also been published in the anthology, Poetic Voices Without Borders, ed. Robert L. Giron (Arlington, VA: Gival Press, 2009), and it is in my new book of poems, Aspens in the Wind. I am pleased to announce that the anthology in which "St. Anthony's Church" appears has won the 2009 National Best Book Award for Fiction & Literature: Anthologies, sponsored by USA Book News.
Copyright © by Clifton Snider, 2010. All rights reserved.
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Page last revised: 28 September 2010