The Utopian Wars

By Thomas Lux
(from the March/April issue of The American Poetry Review)

Amish raiding party attacks a Quaker

Settlement at Muddy Crossing,

killing first the Quaker ferryman

(who is drunk, and never awakes until midstream

to find an Amish man tying an anvil to his neck)

before reaching the village

and killing dozens, quietly at first, by blade

and hatchet (hoping to blame the savages), and

burning nothing

as they work their way toward the center of

town. Kill on the way in, burn

on the way out. In the hills, meanwhile,

the Buddhists quick-change from bright orange

to camo robes, point their howitzers eastward

where they know the Episcopalians

milk cobras

to tip arrows

and fill their bullets' hollow-points.

The Baha'i sit back and sharpen their knives and

saws.

The wily Mennonites withdraw,

their leaders meeting for three days

in upstate New York,

while at the same time the few remaining Jains

turn their cheeks

to reveal slashed and bloody jaws

from the last time

they turned their cheeks.