each phone a heart beating out war
Kharkiv, April 2024
*
An air-raid siren howls in the tins aisle.
Everyone side-eyes the silly woman –
what’s wrong with her, bothering
to switch on the alert app? Isn’t it
enough in the street, the park, the car
the office, the stairwell, the hindbrain?
It’s not like anyone runs for shelter.
Missiles take ninety seconds to get here.
*
The woman just picks out a can of tuna,
oblivious, letting her handbag blare.
Maybe she’s so crammed with sorrow
that the school the hospital the husband
the son must wail in the supermarket
among the habituated,
each phone a heart
beating out war.