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two children

by James Graham 

Posted: 08 March 2003
Word Count: 44
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Content Warning
This piece and/or subsequent comments may contain strong language.


horse-soldiers aim
at a running child
the first has missed

he holds a hen
and calms its nervy neck

Now let me try
the little bastard
says the second.

laughs at the ambling ducks

Charmed life
that little motherfucker
says the third

and feeds the two
big horses and the pony

mummy calls for school

he does not miss






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Comments by other Members



Anna Reynolds at 15:26 on 09 March 2003  Report this post
This is very powerful. Can you tell us where the inspiration for this came from? as a theatre and fiction writer, I find having a writerly response to big events ie. impending war very difficult, to be able to narrow such a big situation down to something I can write about. But that's what you have done here so effectively-- and chopping the sequence up makes it even stronger. Can you tell us anything about the form and structure of this, as opposed to your other work?
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LONGJON at 22:57 on 09 June 2003  Report this post
Brevity, prescience, intense clarity and,most damning, a sense of timelessness, it always has happened this way and probably always will. The sound of the shot in the last line is almost deafening.
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