These kids running through pictures

Jane Zwart

before cameras could remember color, back when

the paint had not yet dried

on the world, and where was the fire? Everywhere

under their feet a patchy shining

and nothing tall standing plumb on either side

of the

street,

canted saplings

and slow ziggurats

in brick,

everything

splayed

away from     the kids   who wreck,

who make                 these pictures.

Their defenseless foreheads, the wet paving. Each cuts

their eyes at the adult who kneels, who stares

through a black birdhouse.

Their hurry does blur some things

on their way into the box: blousing coats

and bobbed hair, hungry auras. And something

without fail also is tucked

in the arm’s right angle: a ball, an orange,

an infant’s skull. They could not

strive more furiously

if it were an infant’s skull.