Topic Summaries

The school-bell is a call to battle,

every step to class, a step into the firing-line.

Here is the target, fine skin at the temple,

cheek still rounded from being fifteen.

Surrendered, surrounded, she

takes the bullet in the head

and walks on.The missile cuts

a pathway in her mind, to an orchard

in full bloom, a field humming under the sun,

its lap open and full of poppies.

This girl has won

the right to be ordinary,

wear bangles to a wedding, paint her fingernails,

go to school. Bullet, she says, you are stupid.

You have failed. You cannot kill a book

or the buzzing in it.

A murmur, a swarm. Behind her, one by one,

the schoolgirls are standing up

to take their places on the front line.