A Poem by M. Lapin

and the sun comes up with the hues of Agent Orange,
Monsanto gray–fiery like the breath of the devil.
These nurses, these chaplains, these soldiers…
sprayed down the great clouds of poison on the forest
and let it enter into themselves–generation after generation,
the Monsanto children, the Dow Chemical children,
the Chiari Zipperheads, the mutations and dead babies–
and nowhere does the blue sky peek through,
nowhere is there a cloud of comfort, nowhere is…
and when the moon falls over this day and night cools,
the victims of Agent Orange–all of them who made it home
only to die, all of them who were born with altered DNA,
all of them who hide in glass bottles in repositories,
I don’t know–the fog grows in thickness over all of us.