More on: Poetry

This is terror
and this must be how it happens—how need

alchemizes into belief.

not in weakness, but in tender
resolution to give way, be broken. . .

The kettle begins to sing
the one note of its one song.
The day becomes itself beyond
the glass of the kitchen window.

This silence before
love pulls itself
apart, against
the current of its own
longing, is the most terrible
silence I know.

When I tilt the cup
it drains like a face.

We’re the seeds our mothers have been planting. If
X marks the spot, let’s dig up the whole alphabet.

Why pray for the dead if not for this,
for God’s speed on their journey, home,
beneath the burden of the proof they bear.

The shooter was a loner—they always are—
but to the bullied and confused, he just
might be the one who understands . . .

When photos of a million horrors
made the papers, a million eyes stopped
and stared, the way a glass of water stares,
and the railcar around it coming to rest.

I am underground,
on a path through small rooms
lit only by delicate chandeliers
of finger and knuckle bones
wired together, shedding a soft
light on the group of worshippers
who tiptoe through.