Feeds:
Posts
Comments

Posts Tagged ‘killing’

After

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , on March 2, 2026| 6 Comments »


 
On this day after
my country bombed
a girls’ school
across the world,
part of me does not
wish to meet the day.
But just after dawn,
I wake to the relentless
honking, honking
of geese returning
from far away
to make a home again
in our yard.
I want to rewrite
yesterday so every girl
who went to school
also came home
to her family,
so every mother and father
woke this morning knowing
their child was safe in their bed.
I am so filled with horror—
we killed them—
I don’t know how to rise.
But the great noise
of the geese returning,
that harsh and strangled sound,
pulls me into the world
to meet whatever the day brings.
A goose wanders past my window,
regal with her long black throat,
proof that life goes on.
Even when we can’t imagine how.
Even then.   

Read Full Post »

Three Prayer Beads after Reading the News

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , on October 27, 2023| 16 Comments »

from one gun shot
across the world,
millions more wounded
 
*
 
translating “number of casualties”
into daughters, sons,
lovers, friends
 
*
 
but what do I do?
I ask the leaves,
lean into the ache as I listen

Read Full Post »

Why I Didn’t Grow a Single Pea this Year

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , on October 18, 2015| 6 Comments »

This is the year I learned to hate the moles,

the whole blind-tunneling, garden-raiding,

carrot-devouring, pea-sprout-munching,

rapidly reproducing, miserable movement of moles.

Not for a lifetime, but for an hour or two,

I would like to be an owl so I might

swoop down on their company in the dark

with my enormous silent wings and my sharp

and merciless beak. I would pluck their bodies

from the rows of beans with relentless precision

and I’d pull them apart, the young ones, too,

no, not for the joy of the massacre,

but because that is what I am born to do.

How free it must be to kill with no conscience,

to take their furry, soft-skinned lives

without tripping on compassion.

How much easier not to muse

about how a rodent’s got to eat something, too,

and why wouldn’t she want an organic carrot,

all crunchy and sweet, or a pea sprout or one hundred,

so tender, so green.

Read Full Post »

The Things We Do

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , on October 15, 2012| 6 Comments »

It’s fall
and the mice
make their way
into the kitchen,
one time
five in a night.
They find
a hole
in the floor
beneath the sink
where the pipes
come up.
I do not know
if they are driven
by hunger
or warmth,
but I do know
how I hate
the sound
of the trap
as it snaps,
how cruel
it feels
to prefer
my comfort
over theirs.
I wonder
if it’s just
because they are small
that I can justify
the act.
I wonder
where the line is,
how big
would be
too big.
I force myself
to look
at their eyes
still bright
as I take them
out into
the night.

Read Full Post »