Anne Graue

THE DEATH OF THE NUT HARVESTER

Your murder was premeditated,
long planned and financed,
benefiting pharmaceutical companies,
loggers, and landowners.

Your ear was sliced off
by hired killers,
stuffed into a pocket,
a trophy and proof
that you were no longer a threat
to the money-makers.

Your body, riddled
with bullets,
next to your wife's
stillness,
lay on the forest floor,
nourishing the soil.


Anne reads "The Death of the Nut Harvester":



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Anne confesses: "This poem's first draft was a narrative of the felling of a tree. This lead me to research the stripping of the rain forests in South America where I read of the cruel and dreadful way in which activists José Cláudio Ribeiro da Silva and Maria de Espirito Santo died, leading me to this final draft."

ANNE GRAUE is a writer living in Mahopac, New York. She has had poems published in Paradigm and Compass Rose. She teaches writing and literature online for the University of Phoenix and Southern New Hampshire University.