you can’t imagine how many wearing blank /
eyes and blunt mouths stand ready, in formation /
to pull you, us, one by one, /
to the engine and lay your body, /
our bodies, /
in the flame when the coal runs low /
you can’t imagine. And yet it still won’t be enough.
you think you’ve seen the most blessed forbearance / you think you’ve seen the most righteous wrath
The reaching obelisk that throws
this long trench bears an inscription…
He was crying, she said.
She hadn’t known they cried.
Since the civilizing process began most of us came to breathe by decree and not in the grace of our mothers
my grandfather came to me in a dream and held my hand with his calloused fingers to remind me I had not, in fact, crawled from a crack in the earth but belonged here
