Patty Dickson Pieczka
The Bus From Aleppo
Bullets shoot a hole into the morning,
and a green bus drives through.
From across the world, I see her face
framed in the window. Her mother missing,
father killed, she touches the hard glass window,
her mouth full of prayers, full of ash. Fear sits
beside her like a ghost. The sky is clouded
with spirits. As the bus turns around and drives back
over crumbles of road, the air is made of knives
and fire. Dark birds flap from a rifle's barrel.
Bio
Patty Dickson Pieczka's second book, Painting the Egret's Echo, won the Library of Poetry Book Award from The Bitter Oleander (2012). Other books are Lacing Through Time (Bellowing Ark Press, 2011) and a chapbook, Word Paintings (Snark, 2002). She won the Maria W. Faust Sonnet Contest in the Best Sonnet category (2014), first prize in the 2012 Illinois Poetry Society contest as well as the Frances Locke Memorial Award (2010). She graduated in Creative Writing at SIU. Writing has appeared in many journals such as Bluestem, Green Hills Literary Lantern, Versedaily.org, and Willow Review. Her novel, Finding the Raven, was released in June, 2016 by Ravenswood Publishing. See Patty's website at http://www.pattywrites.net/