Derek Mejia: “untitled war poem”

About This Poem:

“I wrote this poem as a contemplation on the trauma of war and the stories I grew up hearing from those who survived. It is a reflection on the memories that linger after the last bullets have been fired, the last bombs have been dropped, and the last graves dug.” – Derek Mejia

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untitled war poem

Abandon your home. Run! Washington’s bombs 
Admonish fear into deed and the souls of the innocent. 
Now war and punishment inhabit the foundations. 
Bid the sun farewell, and blow disinfectant 
On the tattered coffins. The smell of rotting corpses 
Strangles. The body of a child, who cannot be more 
Then sixteen is lowered into the ground. His mother 
Weeps for forty years after. One, two, three, four; 
Mourn the dead-end war.

Derek Mejia is a writer and poet from Boyle Heights, CA. He is currently an undergraduate in the English department at the University of California, Santa Barbara. At the moment he is at work on a project detailing the diasporic responses into the concepts of “forgetting” and “unforgetting” found in Salvadoran literature, and how a community rebuilds and reaffirms historical and cultural memory after the trauma of war, and a collection of poetry.