Cousins

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If we must bleed,
let us bleed together,
be of the same wound:
Mary Masitkota says Sand Creek,
Svetlana says Siberian Gulags
Henri says Saint Bartholomew’s Day
Giedre says Bosnia
Kianga says Darfur
Rebecca say Auschwitz,
Bonyaa says the slave trade out of Africa
Rama says the gendercide of infant girls
and so it goes for many pages,
progresses around the circle of friends,
all the lives of grandmothers,
grandfathers, the innocents uncounted,
all the landscapes turned red,
all the unmarked boneyards
all the ash sooted fields,
until I say Columbus’s arrival
in the new world
and the circle is complete.