By Jia Qi Chen
11th grade | Gwinnett School of Mathematics, Science, and Technology | Georgia
3rd place contest winner, Global Health category
With lines from “Prolonged Drought Brings Famine, Death, and Fear to Somalia” by Cara Anna, a Pulitzer Center reporting project
The gaze of the white sun
unfurls like a flag of flame.
The hills rise—
bare, blistered—
against a slack basin of sky:
a mouth flung open, tongueless, dry.
Somalia,
her green dress—once brocaded
with millet and acacia—
burned into the wind.
It is an act of God, they say.
Surely, God is only
heavy-handed upon the Somali.
Robes like torn sailcloth—
ochre, ghost-blue—
flutter in the ribbed hush of sand.
A procession of wings,
folded,
unfolding.
Each footfall splits the earth,
rousing dust that tantrums
about their ankles,
spiraling like the ghosts
of unbridled things.
A girl among them.
A column of ribs cupping
a candle flame, barely
kept.
Her shawl flares around her,
a red whip in the teeth of wind.
It is an act of God, they say.
But God does not
sign arms deals with Al-Shabaab.
Yellow jerrycans nod
on children’s crowns—
sunflowers turned from the sun.
Mothers walk for miles,
the weight of life swaddled
to their backs,
not yet knowing it is gone.
“We’d grieve, stop for a while,
pray.”
Then bury them beside the road.
Children send up kites.
Adults send up prayers.
The sky—bruised violet—
looks onward, unbothered.
Goat corpses rise
from the belly of the wash—
white-lipped, brittle.
The wind keens through
their skulls, whistling like a flute.
It is an act of God, they say.
But God does not
shutter boreholes in Baidoa.
She walks the seabed of an ocean past—
salt dust and glinting heat.
The light sways—inebriate—
the air thick as pulp.
The red horizon bends inward.
All that remains is the
shimmer of ghosts.
She walks the seabed of an ocean past—
salt dust and glinting heat.
The light sways—inebriate—
the air thick as pulp.
The red horizon bends inward.
All that remains is the
shimmer of ghosts.
The heat blooms
into a field of flowers and
she stumbles into a
riot of color:
trumpets of morning glories,
white-hearted desert roses—
petals swooning like
tongues in thirst.
Their colors sear her eyes.
She laughs at the cold sky.
The stones begin to sing.
She can feel the
sound of the ocean.
It is an act of God, they say.
But God does not
set grain prices in Chicago.
She walks until her feet
no longer carry her,
until she falls before
the horizon.
She kneels to pluck
a petal from the garden.
She does not rise
Her robe flutters,
still caught in the wind.
Still dancing.
It is an act of God, they say.
But it was not God
who turned His face.
Jia Qi Chen is a rising senior at Gwinnett School of Mathematics, Science, and Technology in Lawrenceville, Georgia. He is interested in the intersections of language, neuroscience, and the human condition and writes to explore how small personal moments reflect collective experiences. His poem looks at health crises that aren’t photogenic enough for headlines, but shape lives every day. He hopes to study medicine in the future, but will continue to write.
Read more winning entries from the 2025 Fighting Words Poetry Contest.