Poem of the Day
Letters in Winter
By Maya C. Popa
There is not one leaf left on that tree
on which a bird sits this Christmas morning,
the sky heavy with snow that never arrives,
the sun itself barely rising. In the overcast
There is not one leaf left on that tree
on which a bird sits this Christmas morning,
the sky heavy with snow that never arrives,
the sun itself barely rising. In the overcast
How lucky I am tonight to be holding a lantern
at this railroad crossing in the middle of America
and not clinging to a leaky raft on the north Atlantic,
In 1027, not far from Bernburg,
eighteen peasants were seized
by a common delusion.
my boys & I refused to believe it was Michael who didn’t make it through the night even though the cameras strewn across the sky showed the mansion lawn specked with red sirens & from my own covers I imagined him to be simply asleep the way I slept
When the man can’t sleep, he builds
a matchstick replica of Auschwitz
in his basement, working from memory.
most people have absolutely the wrong idea of how to go about cutting a throat, the right way to do it on animals anatomically similar to humans such as dogs, sheep, veal calves and very young pigs—emphatically not on full-grown pigs
I
they have no gathering places
for taking of council nor
agreements
He said: “Straight from the horse’s mouth.”
He said that was straight from the horse’s mouth.
He said it straight from the horse’s mouth.
The bullet has almost entered the brain:
I can feel it sprint down the gunbarrel
rolling each bevel around like a hoop
I am so cold tonight. Lend me your fever
to mull my long pastures of crumbling ice.
Warm the jagged mountains in my spine
They called it a landslide as though
everything shifted and the weak
and strong alike were buried alive.