Another word for obstruct

Al-Sahul region in Yemen, 2020 – Photo by SharabSalam, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Another word for obstruct

The word Yemen

is a lemon, in government mouths

while the poor covet a vaccine for covid-19.

Hospitals strafed silent prisons broken into. I

blurt out,

war is always public murder, but

they won’t let you watch it on TV.

they only feed us Malthusian economics here

and suspicious radar illusions,

of American military bases, frontier forts

because brown skin must be continually

brutalized. and the Red sea

is not the Mississippi

and it’s 9/11. all the time. 

but if the word Yemen stays in your mouth long enough, after

a while it becomes yellow bile.

and you begin to choke

on it.


David Groulx was raised in Ontario, Canada. He is proud of his Aboriginal roots, Anishnabe and French Canadian. He has published 11 books of poetry, and his latest, Solus Urger Voyager (Bookland Books) will be out in early 2023. David’s poetry has appeared in over 200 magazines in 16 countries. See Poetry in Voice.