Junta - Cormorant

What horrors we wage

in the light of day,

bodies left decaying

for the world to see.

Conakry,

September, two thousand nine.

Moïse Dadis,

junta chief, will not resign

his command

to sworn democratic law.

Thousands band

to demand that he withdraw.

Crowd trapped.

Soldiers

gather,

guns drawn.

Fire.

Butchery veiled in tear gas,

bayonettes puncture eyes.

Flesh strewn across the grass,

knives sever robes from thighs.

Women raped with gun barrels,

bullet through a child’s head,

howls of humans feral

as they haul away the dead.

Red berets,

elite guard,

murder-crazed,

a city scarred.

Stores they loot,

ribs they snap

under boot.

Cadavers wrapped.

«C'est du

jamais-vu,»

they said.

«Pourquoi

nous, Allah?»

they pled

to absent god.

At the morgue a mother

seeks out her son.

No remains were found.

A desperate father

reaches for his gun,

his daughter bound

in an army base,

used by soldiers in turn,

‘til a rapist discerned

her familiar face,

and, shamed, set her

free.

She speaks no word to her doctor,

for fear her pain disgrace her kin.

For weeks she dared not sleep or dream.

Camara denied blame for the atrocity:

«The military’s beyond my control.»

The chief of his guard drew a pistol

and fired a round in the president’s

skull.

He survives,

abdicates.

A flood of

candidates

compete in Guinea’s

first truly

democratic vote.

Anarchy

mars the year.

Election

frauds unclear.

Will of the people:

Guineans elect

Alpha Condé.

The girl’s suicide,

the son never found,

the butchers alive.

The butchers alive.