refugee train
small hands starfished
against the glass
1st Place, Triveni Awards 2024
This poem arose out of my despair at witnessing the plight of the world’s displaced children, who are facing traumas not of their own making. Their voices unheard, they use “starfished” hands to silently plead for mercy as the train pulls them away from everything they have ever known. In this instance, I felt that “verbing” was a dynamic and fresh approach not only to convey the shape of hands, but to reference the locomotion techniques of starfish. The children are dissimilar, and yet akin, to starfish. Though unable to regenerate limbs blown off in war, they are ruthlessly uprooted and battered by forces beyond their control.