Item
war
oppression
free verse
dark
This, with a face like a mashed blood orange that suddenly would get eyes and look up and scream War! War! clutching her thick, ragged coat a piece of hat broken shoes War! War! stumbling for dread at the young men who with their gun-butts shove her sprawling— a note at the foot of the page.
Item - meaning Summary
War's Sudden Intrusion
The poem stages a sudden, violent vision of civilian suffering: a battered woman, compared to a crushed orange, comes alive and screams the word "war" while being shoved and stumbling before young men with gun-butts. The image collapses into a brief, anguished tableau that ends abruptly as if reduced to a marginal note. The poem emphasizes shock, bodily damage, and how atrocity can register as an arresting, spare fragment.
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