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If we shoot past one another
like asteroids on a collision course with Mars,
our tongues acidic with accusations
that scour our hearts like lye
shoveled over a shallow grave,
and if we reach such velocity
in our keening to have the last word,
ragged in its self-loathing, then
how can we open to the first
purple crane's neck blooming against
love's adobe wall or notice
the three year old at the wedding
in Afghanistan, her small chest
abloom with bloody roses
or hear her cry lost
with her mother's to helicopter blades
slapping revenge into blue sky
we all breathe?
like asteroids on a collision course with Mars,
our tongues acidic with accusations
that scour our hearts like lye
shoveled over a shallow grave,
and if we reach such velocity
in our keening to have the last word,
ragged in its self-loathing, then
how can we open to the first
purple crane's neck blooming against
love's adobe wall or notice
the three year old at the wedding
in Afghanistan, her small chest
abloom with bloody roses
or hear her cry lost
with her mother's to helicopter blades
slapping revenge into blue sky
we all breathe?
-Pamela Uschuk
Used by permission.
From Wild in the Plaza of Memory (Wings Press, 2012)
Called by The Bloomsbury Review, "one of the most insightful and spirited poets today," Pam Uschuk is the author of six books of poems, including the award-winning Without the Comfort of Stars: New and Selected Poems (2007 Sampark Press, New Delhi and London), Crazy Love (Wings Press), winner of a 2010 American Book Award and Wild in the Plaza of Memory
(Wings Press, April 2012). Translated into a dozen languages, Uschuk
won the 2011 War Poetry Prize from Winning Writers, 2010 New Millennium
Poetry Prize, 2010 Best of the Web, the Struga Poetry Prize (for a
single poem), the Dorothy Daniels Writing Award from the National League
of American PEN Women, and others. Uschuk is Associate Professor of
Creative Writing at Fort Lewis College. Editor-In-Chief of the literary
magazine,
Cutthroat, A Journal of the Arts, she lives in Bayfield, Colorado and Tucson, Arizona.
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