CE Chaffin

Keep the Faith

You say two friends were murdered
but it's a nice day
and there must be middle ground
between the abandoned mineshaft
and the Holstein sky.

Ants kill ants as easily as popping sodas.
Some father fish swallow their fry,
others rock them gently inside their jaws.
Sometimes an ox is gored
by another ox and dies.

Sometimes a country sends its young
to float like dynamited carp
in distant rice paddies.
If mercy were based on evidence
I'd shoot you.

CE Chaffin writes: I’ve published a lot, more on-line than on paper, in everything from The Alaska Quarterly Review to Zuzu's Petals. Mellen Press released my first volume of poems in 1997, entitled Elementary, available through Amazon.com. A second-generation native Californian and family physician, I live near LA in a high rise on the ocean with my wife and three daughters. I am co-editor of the Melic Review and belong to the Zeugma on-line poetry workshop.