MARY LOUISE KELLY, HOST:
Every so often, you run across a poem that seems to capture perfectly a moment in time. Well, one of our correspondents, Neda Ulaby felt that way when she recently encountered this one by poet Donika Kelly.
NEDA ULABY, BYLINE: Donika Kelly was living quietly in Western New York state. She had her first job teaching writing. It was 2018. At the time, U.S. drone strikes in military conflicts were killing scores of civilians in Afghanistan, Somalia, Yemen and Pakistan.
DONIKA KELLY: There was a lot of coverage in the news about the drones dropping bombs and there being civilian casualties.
ULABY: In response, she wrote a poem. It's called "I Never Figured Out How To Get Free."
D KELLY: I'm going to read it. Is that - OK.
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D KELLY: (Reading) The war was all over my hands. I held the war, and I watched them die in high definition. I could watch anyone die, but I looked away. Still, I wore the war on my back. I put it on every morning. I walked the dogs, and they, too, wore the war. The sky overhead was clear, or it was cloudy, or it rained, or it snowed, and I was rarely afraid of what would fall from it. I worried about what to do with my car or how much I could send my great-aunt this month and the next. I ate my hamburger, I ate my pizza. I ate a salad or lentil soup, and this, too, was the war. At times, I was able to forget that I was on the wrong side of the war, my money and my typing and sleeping sound at night. I never learned how to get free. I never learned how not to have anyone's blood on my own soft hands.
It felt scary to share this poem because it does feel so impotent.
ULABY: This poem is about failing to feel anything but powerless, she says, and it's a record or an artifact about paying attention and caring in spite of feeling so powerless at this time and in this place. Neda Ulaby, NPR News.
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M L KELLY: And Donika Kelly's upcoming collection of poetry is called The Natural Order Of Things."
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC) Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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