Turning from the News

16 the minnesota review Stefanie Mariis Turning from the News Impossible to imagine so many knowing so much does not change. A sister of St. Francis home from Honduras or Nicaragua retells the story . . . maybe of a vendor selling lemons, tomatillos gunned down and left in the rubble of fruit & vegetables. Or of the crayoned pictures posted in the schoolhouse with the soldiers illustrated as they are. The other figures on the flowerless ground on their knees, yellow sun double-sized in the corner. We have heard it before, half-awake like children listening at bedtime to the fates of rabbits & water rats. Sometimes we feign helpfulness, but the gifts like Nessus' red shirt are full of blood. And we go on, as though true gifts, as when green turns yellow and lemons wax and drop, will go on forever. Forgetful. Trying to forget—the way family bound by death tries to loosen the knot that binds it. ...