Schoolboys in Dara'a
by Sofia Skavdahl
“…[it] came not from the organized opposition in Damascus or Aleppo or any other major Syrian city, but from the graffiti cans of school boys in a run-down border town halfway to the desert” —GlobalPost
The schools were closed
and they were on holiday,
poor, paint was dirt cheap,
they wanted to be journalists,
to be president, to borrow Professor’s
convertible, risk the snow, drive
into latitudes, whole, young
lives lived without fear, as they should
have been, deliberate or
coincidental. When Sa’id said
he painted horses,
the rest wanted to see. Blue
mustangs, manes twisted
into dusk, kicked up Picasso
squares, they thought
might there be a similar world
of our own creation close,
one more colorful and
might we have a place in it?
About the Author
Sofia Diane Skavdahl is an award-winning poet & researcher. She has forthcoming publications in Academy of American Poets, Raw Art Review, Peace Review, & the 2019 Generative Art Collection.