Morning brings the sun’s revealing fire

to an urban street of warehouse stairs,

old graffiti on a concrete bollard.

Two men stop to survey work done

yesterday, to be repeated today.

The overwhelming grayness, broken

by their faces, by sand making its way

to a dull river under a black bridge,

is mirrored in two cars destroyed

by makeshift bombs, bottles of gas

with cloth wicks, thrown in hate by

brothers against brothers now Others,

proof there will never be a civil war.

 

(after an untitled 2007 photograph from the portfolio, “When Brothers Fight,” by Dominic Nahr)