Advice to the Photographers of Atrocities by Judith McCombs

Advice to the Photographers of Atrocities

by Judith McCombs

(published in The Anthology of Women Poets, 1973, edited by Pamela Victorine,

Dremen Press; originally published in The Carolina Quarterly)

There is a problem of number.

You must not show us

A fieldful of victims

They will look like clothing,

Or abandoned wreckage,

We will not react.

Too many bodies

Are cordwood, numerals

Irrelevant similes.

There is a problem of distance.

In the far, clean air

Overkill has its beauty,

Symmetry...