By Okla Elliott
Featured Art: Evening Tones by Oscar Bluemner
We read about depleted uranium
and try to imagine the scientific facts
about depleted uranium.
What does depleted even mean in the context of uranium?
So we Google it and learn something horrendous.
Or rather something interesting
that has been turned to horrendous purpose.
And so we join a protest against depleted uranium
even though our friends tell us there are more pressing
matters right here at home. How can you post
on Facebook about depleted uranium? our friends ask.
And so we post on Facebook about whatever
our friends have told us is most important to post
on Facebook about, and people stop thinking
about depleted uranium, though it still decays
its way into the cells of Iraqi children—and adults too,
but it is less effective to post on Facebook about the suffering
of adults, so I’ll only mention the children whose lymph nodes
and livers and lungs are mutating
due to depleted uranium. Or rather, I won’t,
since my friends tell me there are more pressing matters
here at home.
Originally published in Issue 19.
New Ohio Review 