A Little Black

A Little Black  - Brendan Constantine The children of Juarez have run out of red crayons. There’s so much blood in their eyes; the bodies of mules dumped in their schools, hands & heads by the road, blood in pools, blood in stories of blood. Before I know it, I’m planning my own crime, the worst a poet can commit: to steal suffering, call it mine. How vivid, I think, what a strong detail on which to build. I open my computer, the great self- making book of our age, search for more of the story, for the words run out of red crayons. I find children out of red in Pakistan, in Haiti, no red left in Afghanistan, none in Georgia. The children of Sierra Leon have gone through pink to purple, in Myanmar they’re down to brown. I thought I had something to add. I have nothing to add but a little black, the color of the line, color that consumes all others.