Poem: Like Cattle by Daniela Buccilli

​Like Cattle

Words by ​Daniela Buccilli
QuailBellMagazine.com

It’s a light blue, bumpy world
where the boot of Italy is a broken stick
and the US spreads out in largesse.
We find Libya on the globe at our knees.
My grandfather spins what sounds hollow,
a papier-mâché toy.  I am 16.
​

CNN is new.  It broadcasts crowds
cheering General Gaddafi.  Dark-haired heads
gather like cattle.  I agree they look Italian. 
He spins the world once, hits it to stop it.
He says he was in Rome in a crowd once, too.
 
Because America bombs North Africa,
someone has filmed curly heads of short men
bullied by their pride, and my grandfather,
once black-shirted Fascist, cock-sure, tallest of short men,
sees himself in Muslim crowds and says,
I didn’t know much when I was young.
 
I don’t sully the air between us. I don’t
tell him what my father, his son, said
that there’s nothing to be done
with Fascists, even old ones,
except kill them.