With soiled hands in their mouth
holding hunger by a tenuous leash,
the grey children, dressed in dust
& hand-me-downs reaching their feet,
watch with big eyes,
the passing strangers
on the polished chrome.
Their mothers tell them:
avoid strangers but these big eyes,
dusty mein staring right back at them
look so familiar, so alien
like the stars in the sky.
They are unaware of how a piece
of star will shine in their palms
but they want it,
so they touch the chrome
with hesitant fingers,
giggle at the smooth finish
& how the dirty strangers
in the face of that mirror
seem to twist, bend like the river
in the throes of a flood.
When the night is deep velvet,
the children talk of the iron beast,
the groaning, roaring smoke,
the beautiful child at the back,
locked behind glass like a fragile thing,
an expensive thing, something
worth stealing. They
laugh even as their stomachs
growl. They feel something for the boy.
They have no name for the thing
inside them yet. It is simple pity.
