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Anthony Liccione
Balloons in Malawi
We heard of your hunger, how you cried with flies
sponging sweat on your distended wineskins.
Scores of children suppressed in a corner
of the world with open sores
lifted by shadows over dearth faces.
Your dejected firmament is my same blissful sky-
that sun that burns you drought is the same
pinwheel that brings me growth.
On my wide screen one evening, blown on PBS
air-timed about the time I sat at the dinner table-
staring at the camera lens as a classical symphony
shared the precious moment.
Landscapes of cactus and yellow-bark thorn trees
scattered across flatlands. With hair in a tress
a women etches stone with charcoal alongside the road
to Gonaives, street beggars pull wooden handcarts
filled with bones of relatives- perhaps to suck the marrow
or offer up to half-eaten gods. Pregnant woman succumb
to barren mountains with pails filled of murky water
perching their head. All painted gray by dust.
I decided to sponsor a child named Anaya,
eighteen dollars a month could pouch nsima.
Two letters and an updated photo each year,
she was the seed that burgeoned my life.
I remember as a child in school, the school
sending up notes in helium filled balloons,
hundreds arose for the famine of the world
we prayed as they vanished in the clouds.
I heard we planned a regime to aid,
lifting a mylar-coated air-balloon, helium filled
and airdrop food in bubble-wrapped packages
marked in Malawian “Gift of the United States
to the starving Malawian people”
A rose bled once when Christ ascended,
avoiding thorns along the way
as the helium balloon, salvation filled
he commanded us to: feed my children.
You grew, the second year like broomstick,
thinly capable to be swept away.
I received your letter, translated-
one c and no e to my last name:
“Thank-you, for your wonderful help.
I am in school. My family needs to move
closer to clinic so my brother may medical.”
She died of malaria not more than twelve.
Those balloons we offered to the sky
I’m sure, have expanded buoyancy
and landed belly swelled of anemia,
bursting a thousand seeds of maize.
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