Aleppo by Lola Haskins The father speaks of his six month old boy, born here, who has never seen the sky. The baby, he thinks, believes the rusty stains on the ceiling of the family's one room are all there is. The cease fire is temporary. There is rubble. But today the father showed his son what he could not have known to dream: air blue as sapphires, crossed by clouds. The father cannot remember when he last felt such joy. The people of Aleppo are on strike against the aid trucks. They do not want food or clothes, they say. Bring them peace. Copyright 2023 Lola Haskins
Lola Haskins’ poetry has appeared in The Atlantic, Christian Science Monitor, Georgia Review, Southern Review, London Review of Books, Beloit Poetry Journal, Prairie Schooner etc and been broadcast on BBC and NPR. Homelight is her 14th collection. The one immediately before that, Asylum (University of Pittsburgh, 2019), was featured in the NYT Magazine. Past honors include the Iowa Poetry Prize, two NEAs, two Florida Book Awards, narrative poetry prizes from Southern Poetry Review and New England Poetry Review, a Florida’s Eden prize for environmental writing, and the Emily Dickinson prize from Poetry Society of America. These poems are from Homelight (Charlotte Lit Press) 2023.
