Tag Archives: Steven Croft

I hold My Daughter’s Hand, by Steven Croft

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that the physician wiped clean of smoke
and dust and I think of the time of no war
so long ago, the trips in my brother’s car
to the quiet country stream by the olive trees.
..
My daughter, I cradled you after the meal until
your cries softened, then held you and looked
for your future in the quiet stream
..
I feel her hand has grown cold, but I will not
tell them.  Days, nights, days I prayed to Allah
for the bombs to stop.  Now I am exhausted.
Bombs shake the floor but I have no prayer
left, just this hand of my daughter I hold on to.
..
My daughter, I stare now at the quiet stream
where I will wash these wounds, by the trees
I will bury you in the peace of your beginning
..
I don’t want the busy attendant to stop so
I keep my head down, look at white bandages
stained with red that wrap your chest.  All
life I have left is holding this beautiful hand.
..
..
Steven Croft is the author of two chapbooks, Coastal Scenes and Moment and Time.  He has recent poems in Politics/ Letters Live, Sky Island Journal, As It Ought to Be Magazine, and Poets Reading the News.

Prisoner 1858, by Steven Croft

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My feet sore, broken, face
pressed against cinder blocks,
cooler than our unwashed world
of bodies in the small jail cell.
..
Dragged back to interrogation,
hung by ankles from a dark ceiling,
leg irons are tentacles of pain
the guard strums with a stick,
.
Then beats me.  The outskirts
of the city are broken shells
of buildings.  I am told I am
responsible.  My companion,
..
Fear, a vertigo that leaves and
comes back until I can’t hear
the questions or count the strikes —
it is now that I dream an other
..
Self.  Asked to give the names
of others, I think human existence
is full of such traps, that this
is why I’m here, my name spoken
..
By another, hanging here, as
I lose sense of time and believe
I am him, but, instead, I say
the names of my family silently
..
To myself, careful never to release
this precious treasure to brutes
though pain boils in my brain while
tears fall from my eyes unbidden.
..
Instead, I go home and sit beside
them, share the morning meal,
reach for my wife, my daughter,
gently, unbidden.
,,
,,
..
Steven Croft is the author of two chapbooks, Coastal Scenes and Moment and Time.  He has recent poems in Politics/ Letters Live, Sky Island Journal, and As It Ought to Be Magazine.

Idlib, by Steven Croft

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We don’t sleep anymore, waking,
unwaking, all the same nightmare.
Today tragedy killed us — we
are servants of God but the War,
pounding its giant steps, found
our home, and I found all my life,
my daughter’s body, in a gauze
of dust, acrid smoke perfuming
her careful shape, my worried hands
on her death-marbled face, fingers
scared to touch the truth.  I
hear my ghost wailing.
..
,,
,,
Steven Croft is the author of two chapbooks, Coastal Scenes and Moment and Time.  He has recent poems in Politics/ Letters Live, Sky Island Journal, and As It Ought to Be Magazine.