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Madrasa Mothers

Death from hunger

Slow but certain.

Or a boy’s life saved

Behind a mullah’s curtain.

A murder in the street.

Or a son lost to toxic meat.

The options determine

The madrasa mother’s choice

The answer delivered

In quivering words without voice.

Whose son vanished

In the fires he lit?.

Who lingered,

In the roulette he hit?

Madrasa mothers know not,

Mullahs don’t do well

The death ceremony bit.

Who is blown up?

Who lives?

Whose number is up next?

Allah knows best.

Madrasa mothers do not wait up

For the sordid fest.

What is a jihadist’s mind?

A political pundit asks.

Who is the suicide kind?

An intellectual tasks.

Kill them there, not here,

A security freak blasts.

Where are the derelicts mothers?

A preacher taunts.

Worlds apart,

In the parallel universe,

How will they converse?

A Jeffersonian sage

Pontificating on his lofty rung

And

A dazed woman, her son obliterated,

A Madrasa mom staring at cow dung.