A bowl of rocks, a bird of stone.
Gray granite heavy and flightless
like the flies whose wings my brother pulled
before singeing them black with sun-
light shone through glass.
When you look close, things burn.
Rock forms to fingers for digging
or killing: stones won’t tell.
A half-rock the size of a chicken
heart heavy in the hand.
I picked it up in Dachau: a token
dark as blood.
Deb Stone is a freelance writer whose work has appeared in The Oregonian, The Portland Tribune, Asylum, Oregon Gourmet Foods, Poetic Voices, ERWA, Kid-Bits and Willamette Writers. Her screenplay Still Waters was a Sundance Finalist and placed in the top ten percent at Austin Film Festival. Deb serves as a court-appointed advocate for abused and neglected children, and co-founded Shoulder to Shoulder, a child welfare conference created to provide concurrent training for government, non-profit agency, para-professional and parents.