What the Bullets Sang by Steve Klepetar

In memory of the Charlie Hebdo murders, 1/7/15

Today bullets sing the praises of flesh.
How soft it feels, how fragile the bones

beneath, how red and copious the blood.
Someone barks at the sky, and the moon

appears, swathed in an ocean of clouds.
Offended, he fires off a thousand rounds

and the moon bleeds and disappears.
All night, pens draw their own form of

blood. In the morning it is calm and silent
and cold. Later, snow begins to fall and bare

oaks scratch quietly at the gray-white sky.
Somewhere the rage grows again, heated

ball pulsing at its swelling core. Someone
nails the only face of god to a dying tree

face without mercy, a human face frozen
in adamantine certainty. A crow screeches

and the echo bounces back across the snow,
falling to earth among trees and fields and tears.