Capacities: A Double Sonnet

The nineteen year old rebel
fighter has just finished
chopping up the blinding,
concussive, suffocating dust
with his final magazine of ammo.

He gets a text message from
his wife: She and the baby
have escaped the city
with her cousin. 
                                 He gazes
peacefully at the bloody puddle
where his booted foot
used to be, and is happy.


The insurance executive
is on a well-deserved vacation
with his devoted slender wife
and their lovely daughter,
back from Brown.  The perfumed
path through the Costa Rica forest
shouts with bloom and bird cry.
Tonight, they toast his promotion,
their anniversary, her graduation.

His neck, his shoulders, his gut,
his shuffling feet, are freighted
with an unsupportable sadness.





A carpenter, Ted Jean writes, paints, plays tennis with lovely Amy Lee.  His work appears in Beloit Poetry Journal, DIAGRAM, [PANK], Juked, Pear Noir!, Gargoyle, many other publications.