Robert Dorsett is a physician who lives and works in Berkeley. He has held a MacDowell fellowship and is a recipient of a grant from the Translation Center at the University of California at Irvine. He has poetry forthcoming in Bitter Oleander and North American Review.
Refugee Camp
Milky water churns in a gully.
Rusted oil canisters, torn shoes, suds
from a latrine's runoff, float
among reflections of a shack.
Along its sides, children play soldier
with wood-stick guns. A frog
chugs squat sounds. Mosquitoes
swarm above the water's paste.
The sky, like a morning glory,
closes toward dusk. Tissues of cloud drift by.
The sunlight sticks upon leaves
of a corner garden, where the soil
is slippery, stained black. The shed's built
with junked tin sheets, softwood plugs.
The parents left to forage. An old woman
spots me, steps back inside.
Robert Dorsett is a physician who lives and works in Berkeley. He has held a MacDowell fellowship and is a recipient of a grant from the Translation Center at the University of California at Irvine. He has poetry forthcoming in Bitter Oleander and North American Review.