Stomach Pain

John Rutherford

March 11, 2022

I come to work late,

do the best to ignore the news

and answer questions from my friend

“Who’s winning over there?”

Give the best answers that I can,

Russia’s winning, as expected

but nobody wins when you’re fighting

memory, the truth, and civvies

with yellow armbands.

What use are NLAWS and BMPs

against memory?

A Molotov cocktail,

gasoline and a rag in a vodka bottle,

chucked against the side of a tank.

What use are machine guns,

Polish MiG-29s, against truth?

GRAD rockets across the Dnieper,

a fleet full of water in the Black Sea.

What use are soldiers

against civilians armed by the state?

Mortars hidden in apartment blocks,

censorship in big tech.

I grunt through a wave of nausea,

my stomach a clenched fist,

at least it’s Friday.

John Rutherford is a poet writing in Beaumont, Texas. Since 2018 he has been an employee in the Department of English at Lamar University. Since 2014, he has followed the events in Ukraine.