I have the profanities
for all eight occurrences
of Emily.

Meanwhile you
my dear composer
are flying up there
in your very own
turboprop fighter trainer

I didn’t cry, so we drank wine on our dark purple couch
and you fell asleep in a little ball listening to the weatherman
talk about how much snow we were going to wake up to.

What he would do
is just a little harm. With his bitty
bullets, a meager massacre of
men mass manufactured and plentifully
in stock.

About the morning I was born, I know
nothing---about the first, sharp contractions
that tore Mother’s belly, bending her over the back
of a chair.

Our roots fibrous,
souls still hardened in our ankle-bones,

We danced on sand dunes and hung
in parallel crescent moons on mud

I wanted to have faith,
and maybe I could have,
if not for all those cries, the men
running up the hill

This night is a shard
of glass. It is a dark, shut mouth
and I am stranded inside.

forget death, drinking your
coffee, reading the news, six
a.m. It’s there, an invisible
deadline taunting in your ear—

A stumbling red fox in New York City
is like a child in the sun on a summer day,
scattering details, desperately solving
problems that are humanly possible.

wind like angry prayers
and soil turns to lifted ash

and desolation’s face remains
glued into the earth