CLAIRE MALROUXHanging over its ramp like bent old men
A girl in laced boots bites into an apple
The drone of passing cars is comforting
Will there always be people to embrace
In the enclosure of their blood-loud arms?
And grass, pale roses to calm
Their clamorous flight into the void?
And will there always be a figure bent
Over decoding the benevolent
Mystery of a summer morning?
Someone something to establish somewhere
A place to meet again?
—marilyn hacker
There’s War or There’s Peace
There’s war or there’s peace
Peace like a kind of sorrow
when the wait for who knows what prolongs itself
Hail rattles the tarp on an abandoned cart
where it rumbles like a drum
Some children huddled inside
will stay there for hours which were only
minutes, perhaps; perhaps only seconds
The sky is leaden; an absence
without form, content, color, odor
nails them to the planks
Will they return
from that crushing
from that sinking
into the muddy, forgetful heart of the earth?
—marilyn hacker
Every Breath
Every breath (I lied to myself)
in my own breath every flower
will sharpen my eyes every ocean
will wander in my blood
and struggling skin on skin against the specter
of the wind life always grew green again
tangled in death’s curls but what
memory hovered of fields and of bison