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96 pages, Hardcover
First published February 11, 2020
Prayer
What can we offer the child
at the border: a river of shoes,
her coat stitched with coins,
her father killed for his teeth,
her mother, sewing her
daughter’s future into a hem.
Alone, but for a brother who shoves her
ahead through the barbed-wire fence,
knowing she’s safer without him —
a truth she cannot yet fathom,
being too young for the ways of men.
Nothing is what we can offer.
The child died years ago.
Except practice a finer caliber of kindness
to the stranger rather than wield
this burden of self, this harriedness.
Humility involves less us.
Snow in Rome
on the synagogue’s dome, the palms, the pines,
the travertine spine of Aurelian wall
against which our transgressions pile:
We gossiped we snubbed a dinner guest.
So much for self-awareness;
all walls speak of weakness,
the need to mount defense.
This one’s marred by cannonballs,
scarified by trilobites embedded
in its stone. Their shells are gone.
What’s left is what’s missing. A fossil is
a negative. We hate being human,
depleted by absence. Once
I had the sense to hold herself apart.
We've hurtled toward disaster
to practice moving faster
than regular living allows.- from 'On Wearing a Tracking Device'