Scars, Tears, and Wounds Like Weapons: The Poetry

“The wound is the place where the Light enters you.”

— Jalal ad-Din Muhammad Rumi (13th century)

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"I'm Not Finished."

Three days after we put her in the ground, I heard her voice in the kitchen - not a memory, not the echo grief makes of the dead, but her voice, her...
Cherry

Atlas of the Drowned Country

The realtor calls it waterfront. The water is in the kitchen. We sleep upstairs. We've always slept upstairs. The first floor belongs to the crabs...
Gold cherry

Hold Still

I was here before the walls. This was forest once. Before that, swamp. Before that, sea. I don't remember what came before the sea. I was there. I...
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Malachi's Last Report

The chimneys stand like ribs now. The river stopped years ago. Someone is still whistling somewhere a tune that's forgotten what it was for. There...

Nobody

A poem.
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Rehearsel

I found a bone in the yard last week that fit my hand too well. I told myself: coincidence. I told myself: the world is full of things shaped like us...
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Snap Decision

I find her reading glasses on the counter where she always left them, beside the bowl she used for keys she never found again. I find the knife she...
Cherry

The Field Behind the House

I asked my daughter what she was waving at through the window, and she said, the man in the field. There is no man in the field. There is only the...
4 likes
Cherry

The Repeater

This time, Sam chooses to turn right and starts walking. The same yellow taxi passes by him again on the same city street. The lady wearing the red...
Cherry

The Rules

My son has rules for bedtime. I thought he made them up— the way children do. Games that only make sense to them. But he was serious. So serious it...
Gold cherry

While I Wasn't Listening

In the hush after a ping, the breath between notifications, the half-second before refresh— nothing at all. I remember quiet. I remember reaching for...
2 likes