Bio

 

Mary Mills is a teacher of world languages. She has translated poetry from German to English, and her work, Voices of Theresienstadt, has appeared in Pacific Coast Philology. She also dabbles in poetry forms. Her version of an extended haiku is on www.newgrange.com as “Winter Solstice at Newgrange.” Her sestina, “SOMA” has appeared in The Potomac: A Journal of Poetry and Politics.

 

Trigger Warning

Christ wears a gas mask,
shudders as Putin’s machine
sputters boots on the ground
in Ukraine, where war weeds choke
sunflowers that bleed black.

By the Polish border,
gardeners plant seeds,
feed their flower beds,
sing songs, hold flower parades.
Everywhere, everything blooms.

They sing their quackgrass canon.
“Fight the quackgrass, pull it out.”
Flowers burst alive with waves of color.
Uprooted quackgrass turns brown and withers.

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