At our most dangerous we
are two girls in a loft. We spin plans
of children’s children: no one’ll play Ophelia
this time. They’ll know war not from memory but
from imagination; they’ll fall in love
loudly and peacefully; they’ll grow up, no
fragile dream. They’ll grow up saying we dreamed
the part with the blood. On TV the men glower,
talk of thoughts and prayers.
Meanwhile searchlights rake
over fearful innocent men; classrooms
lie empty, gunshots echoing;
borders bleed, scorched
by cartographers’ boots.
Powerful men call it inevitable, count quotas
for the dead. But we say every name, spin plans–
imagine a world with no new memorials.
No glass amends. No pint-sized graves.
the quiet revolution of a dream
of a different world, or a moment
in an attic: two girls inventing something
small and ripped and
gorgeous. How I found a flyer in the attic:
the Statue of Liberty sends regards;
how, if you look close enough, Liberty
is a woman marled into spark,
who scorches her burial, who won’t
be ashed whole. How she burned
a path into the body’s borders,
flame the only god she wouldn’t die to.
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