Broken Periodic
No one who has ever had a childhood
wants what’s happening. No one
who has ever wondered anything:
where the rain’s headed in her steel hooves.
Questions wrongly put swell
like moths under a light. On the streets,
everything looks human. You forget
certain animals are bloodless injured.
You must imagine some other color
that means hurt. At night, you sleep
with something like your gifts: to anguish
and ascribe a language, music.
To slice a fig the long way and linger.
To grieve for a country.
To grieve without a country to grieve.
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Listen:
Maya Popa reciting Broken Periodic
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