Christine Klocek-Lim

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Gadreel

— fallen angel, “God is my helper,” taught mankind about weapons of war

Her heart burned despite the cold subway, the explosive packs on her belt and back heavy and hot as grief. Around her the ignorant faces of the enemy: petals on a wet branch, the mother tree infested, already dying. Best to put them down. And after, perhaps they would be cognizant, their souls suddenly reborn into reason. She would explain how their lethargy killed her husband, her brothers and father. They would mourn their negligence, their disregard for her people, her homeland. Or perhaps she would meet them again and they would be no different: their torpor infinite, spanning death and life over and over again in terminal apathy, their souls cursed, unforgiven. No way to know. And so she recreated herself, made her body into the spider that bites in darkness, her widow’s veil more battle mask than shroud. Her handbag full of nails, the shrapnel reassuring despite the lurching car, the click of the track, as she waited for Lubyanka station, the last stop. Morning never more beautiful than right now.

(http://www.calgaryherald.com/columnists/suicide+bombers+dying+revenge/2923173/story.html) (http://www.cnn.com/2010/WORLD/europe/03/29/russia.subway.explosion/index.html)
(http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/worldnews/article-1262222/Moscow-metro-bombings-Chechyna-link-emerges.html)


Bio:
Christine Klocek-Lim received the 2009 Ellen La Forge Memorial Prize in poetry. In 2010, her manuscript “Dark matter” was a semi-finalist for the Sawtooth Poetry Prize and the Philip Levine Prize in Poetry and her manuscript “The Quantum Archives” was a semi-finalist at Black Lawrence Press' Black River Chapbook Competition. She has two chapbooks: How to photograph the heart (The Lives You Touch Publications, November 2009) and The book of small treasures (Seven Kitchens Press, March 2010). Her poems have appeared in Nimrod, OCHO, Poets and Artists (O&S), The Pedestal Magazine, Diode, the anthology Riffing on Strings: Creative Writing Inspired by String Theory and elsewhere. She is editor of Autumn Sky Poetry and her website is www.novembersky.com.



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