Death in the Margins

By Lynn Ockersz

The restive 21-year-old,

Whose body they found,

In a weed-overgrown well,

Seemed another fair victim,

Of the seductive talker,

Whose flowery rhetoric,

With his recipe of suicide,

Brought under his spell,

Hamlet-upon-hamlet,

But lurking in the backdrop,

Are these tell-tale signs,

Of yet another narrative,

Which too is compelling….

Months of joblessness,

Since the clothes factory,

Now has less orders;

A home sans electric power,

One breadfruit meal a day,

And a bed-ridden mother,

Languishing without medicines.