LICKS THE VEINS / *image by Amalie Flynn*

Walter Cronkite left footprints
in the gravel of Saigon
but he didn’t tell you their names
didn’t show you the morning commute
of an accountant in Hanoi

they televise bedsheets
replacing blown out glass
in homes of blown out people
but not the Arab Renaissance Bookshop
which opened its doors in 1966

fire hoses are used
to extinguish human spirit
courage licks the veins like flame
and the only parts of war
they can’t powerwash away
are the bloody crevices
under their own fingernails.

Kat Raido

Kat Raido is a poet from Jersey City, NJ. She is pursuing a Master of Fine Arts degree in Poetry and Fiction at Cedar Crest College. She works with themes of environmentalism, sexuality, and economic inequality in her writing. Kat fell in love with poetry through the Hunterdon Poetry Club at Rutgers, an underground basement performance collective.