- Non-Erotic Poetry
- The Vulture and the Baby
Note: You can change font size, font face, and turn on dark mode by clicking the "A" icon tab in the Story Info Box.
You can temporarily switch back to a Classic Literotica® experience during our ongoing public Beta testing. Please consider leaving feedback on issues you experience or suggest improvements.
Click here
The Vulture and the Baby
The silent photograph
screams obscenities at me,
grabbing me
cutting me
ripping into me,
forcing me to see
the horror so far outside my world.
My wailing tears soak the print
below the picture
but not one drop falls inside its borders.
The child lies in the desolate field,
face in the dirt,
struggling to stand
struggling to move
struggling to live.
Her black skin outlines
protruding ribs
and matchstick arms;
her quiet whimpering
leaps loudly off the glossy page.
The vulture waits in the hot sun
a stone's throw behind.
A statue frozen
with no emotion,
crouching intently
crouching silently
crouching patiently,
waiting for the time
to claim its prize,
as it must do.
The photographer took the picture,
as he must .... and then
he chased the scavenger away.
The image shocked the world
and won him a Pulitzer.
But with the realities forever imprinted,
tearing at his tortured mind,
he jumped from the pedestal
with a noose around his neck,
without making a sound.
- COMMENTS
Anonymousover 4 years agoWow. This is very emotional. I like the insight into the photographers mind and the torment artists sometimes endure. Lovely poem.
BlueCobaltabout 13 years agoI read this this morning and it has been on my mind all day. The poem matches the power of the photograph.
Liarabout 13 years ago...is there anyone who haven't seen it? It must be one of the most prolific pictures of the last century.
So IMO you really don't need to hammer out all the details of its grimness (besides, the poem's title says 95% of eveything that's significant about it anyway), and rather focus on its effect. On you, on the photographer, on the world.
buttersabout 13 years agoi do believe you've got it!
that would work. i am certain of it. starting each of those 3 with 'the' - child/vulture/photographer - and following up with the narrator's own reactions is a smart move. because where the leap and the noose are the end of the photographer, the photograph lives on, still causing ripples...
twelveooneabout 13 years agoThis must have been tough, but the first stanza said it all. I know you must provide the information, try this: rearrage the stanzas so the first is the last, see what you can get away with. With the first as first everything seems anticlimactic.
100
