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aftermath

in flight

As the babies lost their cries,
keening women gathered them
to chests to gallop them over hills
past the shadowed valley,
snipers at the gates.

What else would a dragon keep
but these? Against theft
of treasures it could not
know the golden virgins:
the pose of the hour
was vigilance

against the useless piles,
and it curled at our ankles,
holding us to their warnings
against loss.

Eyes of every witness burned
and through tiny speakers
in our ears, the guards at the gate
said go home; the curators
of spectacle insisted, there’s nothing

and only the crazy and the sentenced
kept on and the angels at the floor
with the mops, and the dead.

Open casket equals open door
to enter the theater of mourning
then came hawks and the hawkers
went the blind mice Now run,
someone said, and we did then
the farmer’s wife.

Admission was free to the public,
see how they––

History was removed by the surgeons.
They held efficient needles to our lips,
we were the crimes against their progress
to be sentenced, but our eyes were burning
from the gas, and our faces wet

you fell three times
along the road
and we with you

even now
the guards feared.

*
From Flight Songs

daughter

in the morning dark

only care now.
only open hands
in tremors.

you are still asleep
and I remember.

how

I carried you to the shore
before

you could walk and we
sat there watching. you
collected grains of sand.
between your palms
to feel them.
trembling

and then to the sea
to meet with open hand
her power and know her
press against your own.

the slapping sound,
the open palm,
your laugh––

remember.