Another Way to Fight, by Becky DeVito

Another Way to Fight 
 
Eighty-five years after Guernica
the news no longer comes 
in black and white. 
 
Russia’s first incursion fizzled 
from world headlines in barely a week. 
But it wasn’t contained. Eight years 
 
later, one month and a day 
after tanks crossed the border, 
Invasion of Ukraine blasted 
 
around the globe to San Diego, 
into the bedroom of Andres, a fourth grader 
home on a sick day, through his prodigy mind 
 
and fingers into a nine-by-twelve-inch sketch, 
to be confided in his mom as she stopped by 
to check on the silence, and was finally 
 
captured on a four-by-five-foot 
canvas in the living room, bullets flying 
at soldiers and civilians alike, 
 
now on display in New York 
with five hundred fifty prints for sale 
so the Klitschko Foundation can dry the tears 
 
that soak the blue and gold flag that flies 
above fists that will never fall, whether or not 
they retain a body to call their own. 
 
Becky DeVito
 

This poem was inspired by Invasion of Ukraine, by Andres Valencia, discussed at 1.40 in the video. Click here and scroll down to view.

Becky DeVito is a psychology professor at Capital Community College in Hartford, Connecticut. After working her way through trauma by writing poetry, her doctoral dissertation investigates the ways in which poets come to new insights through the process of drafting and revising their poems. Her poetry has been published in bottle rockets: A Collection of Short Verse, The Ekphrastic Review, Frogpond, Modern Haiku, Ribbons: Tanka Society of America Journal, and others. She is currently working on a novel series. Join her on Twitter, Facebook or Instagram. Sources referenced for this poem: Chase Contemporary, Forbes, The New York Times, Robb Report.