[for when sneezes sound like bomb blasts]

I.

no one cut down these trees
how strange veins
green in our wrists

twist lines like rootless
trees
we inherited sickly

roots our ancestors couldn’t plant
deep enough to

grow

II.

in laos in villages in fields
trees no longer grow
[grandma said]
our sky spit metal meddling
with drought burnt out seeds
from broken trees
uprooted roots
uprooted
like ruin
eaten by clusters of bombs
our bombies

mined deep inside dirt

we tried planting shrapnel in our
tired
tired

land but dirt exploding omens said
plant shrapnel into skin

harvest wounds

feed flesh to skin and bones

metal cannot feed starving children

but sickness will

III.

here diseased sneezes
rooted trees straight
sneezing green into leaves
[grandma said]
but after violent droughts
sneezes echoed blasts

where somewhere bombies kept
bombing
like breathing

brutal bruises as

weapons for living 
 living
long enough for heat heating
gravity red enough to tear
the quick tearing apart of
body&soul

IV.

quick! sing sorry prayers after sneezing
[grandma said]

apologize

before spirits spit your soul so
i grew up grieving sneezes
single threes, choo! choo! choo!
some took comfort believing
three sneezes someone’s
thinking of you
i grew up imagining a family
grandma grandpa mother daughter
thinking of me my

breathing
praying to me
sneeze
only
once
maybe
half
a
sneeze
please
we’d only lose a knee
a heartbeat

a pinky
not an entire body
entire life

V.

this whole village sang sorry
prayers together yes
this village sneezed

together once
[grandma said]

each quick searching
 singing
eyes for phantom limbs
ears for soundless screams
Nothing.
but

what they didn’t know
[grandma weeped]
in a neighboring village

a grandma a grandpa a mother a daughter
prayed and prayed and prayed

while their green

green

rootless tree
silently
uprooted
itself