A Small Branch of the Arms Race Scratches Her Face

by Renée M. Schell

what happens 
when a young child says 
“thirsty” or invents 
a word for the dry tongue?

her arms spindly tools
her mouth falls open
arrival armor
alleviate allelujah

a mother fingers the hair along her daughter’s forehead
hears the incantation 
No parasites, no cholera,
no typhoid, no Hepatitis A

water as prisoner
guard it like gold 
the telltale rifle
sand burns between toes 

her mouth makes 
the opening 
for the word water 
as weapon

O weapon tree, 
branch of the military
lift your arms
reach for the sky

they will practice on the child
reaching for water
make the target flow 
over dry sand

the bullets causing 
ever widening ripples.

---

“‘A Small Branch of the Arms Race Scratches Her Face’ had its start with a photograph from a back issue of National Geographic. I was struck by the image of two women in chadors and a girl in a desert region with armed soldiers near a large body of water. To me, it looked like the soldiers were guarding the water. Around the same time, I was reading the novel Memory of Water by Emmi Itäranta, which imagines a world where fresh drinking water is controlled by the authorities. These two experiences catalyzed the writing of the poem.”  —Renée M. Schell

Renée M. Schell’s poetry appears in New Verse News, Catamaran Literary Reader, Literary Mama, Naugatuck River Review, and other journals. In 2015 she was lead editor for the anthology (AFTER)life: Poems and Stories of the Dead. She holds a Ph.D. from Stanford University and teaches second grade at a Title I school in San José, California. Her debut poetry collection, Overtones, was published in March 2022 by Tourane Poetry Press.