We are honoring the top winners of our Seventh Annual Found Poem Student Contest by publishing their work from June 6 to 17. You’ll be able to read the whole collection here as we go.
Below, a piece by Preanka Pillai, taken from a 2016 article, “On the Ground in Aleppo: Bloodshed, Misery and Hope.”
Two Hearts in Syria
“We have two hearts in this country —
One for sorrow and one for happiness.”
Whistling death can fall from the sky
As bombs drop into the streets
Providing a deadly metronome
To their deathly existence.
In the distance, laughing children poured out of schools
People try to be alive.
As rebel rockets rained through the sky,
A soldier, splayed on the ground, feels the blood
Trickling from both hearts.
But as the party resumed and crashed into the night,
The partygoers, unable to hear the explosions,
Continued to sing and dance.