Inspired by the quiet homage to the 1994 Rwanda Genocide that Wangechi Mutu started posting on social media on April 6, I decided to respond. I offer these poetic pieces as a way to think about the way in which we navigate through knowing about and understanding the genocide and other wars that endure.

Here are Days 21-30 as they come

Day 21

A ring around a rosie

A ring around a posy

A ring around a peony

A ring around a buttercup

A ring around a baby’s breath

A ring around a bouquet

 

A pocket full of posers

A pocket full of diamonds

A pocket full of memory

A pocket full of justice

A pocket full of ideas

A pocket full of shit

 

Ring around a rosy

A pocket full of posies

Achoo! Achoo!

We all fall down!

 

Day 22

Twenty years later we’re young again

as we should be

Welcome to this country

Welcome

 

Come and see how we live

Come and see how we get over everything

Come and see how we exhibit skulls

Come and see how we caress skeletons and tell stories about who these bones were

Come and see how how easy we are with things

Come and visit.

 

Our country is now open for tourism.

 

Day 23

Some of us fell between words

& some of us onto the sharps edges

at the end of sentences

 

And if we’re not impaled 

we’re still falling through stories that don’t make sense

 

Day 24

& then there was just the two of us

everything in flames

 

There was the two of us

your arm around my shoulder

mine around your waist

we hobbled on

just the two of us

 

we hobbled on

just the two of us for a while

& then there was just me

 

Day 25

Bones lie

Bones lie

Bones lie

About their numbers and bits and parts

 

Bones lie in open air, in fields, under brushes, along with with others in state vaults

in museums as if they belong there

in piles, as if they would ever do that in life

 

Bones lie about being dead

bleached

broken

pulverized, as if we who are not all bone

don’t live with nightmares

 

Bone have nothing to say

Nothing about who it was that loved them the most

 

Day 26

That day dared to set

As did the one after it and the one after that

Days became long nights

That became mornings which appeared innocent

of the activities of the day before

 

That day shouldn’t have set

 

The next day

if that other day had collapsed from exhaustion, should have held the night sky at bay

That day should have remained fixed in perpetuity

so that we would always know it to be true

 

Day 27

Glory be to the Father to whom all this is his will

Glory be to the Son who claims to have died for the sins of all men

Glory be to the Holy Spirit that guides the tongues of flames of the believers

As it was in the beginning

As it was in the beginning

As it has always been

 

As long as we need to hark back to a beginning

that only exists in the memory of the elusive trinity who can only be accessed through faith

Nothing will ever change

Nothing will ever change except by faith

So nothing will change

 

Day 28

When I (survey) look out at the world around me

(The wondrous cross)

On which (the Prince of Glory) every one that I loved, died

(My richest gain) My richest gain? My richest gain?

I count (but) as loss

It was all loss, all of it

And so I pour contempt on all (my) the pride

That seems to think that there is anything to celebrate

 

Don’t ever forbid it, Lord

That I should (boast) dare to speak out

(Save in) on the deaths

(of) Christ, my God, everything, everything that mattered

All the vain things that charm (me) you most – the sky scrapers, the clean streets

& the moneyed vendors

(I) You sacrifice (them) your own morality (to his blood)

 

There is nothing to party about, nothing

 

See from (His head, His hands, His feet) this vantage point

Just how much sorrow and love and bone and blood flow mingling down

Did e’er such love and sorrow meet? Did ever?

Where did ever such a twisted sense of wreath making come from?

Or why would thorns compose so rich a crown?

Can you not read the land?

 

Were the whole realm of nature mine

That were a present far too small

Love so amazing so divine

Demands my soul, my life, my all

 

So it took my soul, my life, my all

 

Day 29

Time is a curve

so long that it seems to be a straight line

 

I can see myself walk away

I see

& then remember my heel striking the ground first

the weight of my shoulders

the back of my head & the low hang of my neck

 

Circle forward

What does my face matter if my heel is still cracked?

 

Day 30

A grid

a fence

a field

some grass

some stumbling

 

a ditch

mud

a broken slipper

 

a tear

a sheet

some fumbling

a groan

 

a metal plate with a faded rose in it

a rusty kettle that will never boil.