Junta

What horrors we wage in the light of day,
bodies left decaying for the world to see.

Conakry, September, two thousand nine.
Moïse Dadis, junta chief, will not resign
his command to sworn democratic law.
Thousands band to demand that he withdraw.

Crowd trapped. Soldiers gather, guns drawn.
Fire.

Butchery veiled in tear gas, bayonets puncture eyes.
Flesh strewn across the grass, knives sever robes from thighs.
Women raped with gun barrels, bullet through a child’s head,
howls of humans feral as they haul away the dead.

Red berets, elite guard, murder-crazed, a city scarred.
Stores they loot, ribs they snap under boot. Cadavers wrapped.

“C’est du jamais-vu,” they said.
“Pourquoi nous, Allah?” they pled to absent god.
At the morgue a mother seeks out her son. No remains were found.
A desperate father reaches for his gun,
his daughter bound in an army base, used by soldiers in turn,
‘til a rapist discerned her familiar face,
and, shamed, set her free.

She speaks no word to her doctor,
for fear her pain disgrace her kin.
For weeks she dared not sleep or dream.

Camara denied blame for the atrocity:
“The military’s beyond my control.”
The chief of his guard drew a pistol
and fired a round in the president’s skull.

He survives, abdicates.
A flood of candidates compete in Guinea’s
first truly democratic vote.

Anarchy mars the year.
Election frauds unclear.
Will of the people: Guineans elect Alpha Condé.

The girl’s suicide, the son never found,
the butchers alive. The butchers alive.