Koss
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hope is the faint heartbeat of despair
a tiny skipping stone emerging from black water’s crest
flecks of green in planted seedlings you were about to toss
the fleeting sun after three months of winter gray
or days of ceaseless rain when no prayer
could conjure a glint, and everything you love has gone
and men with guns and hanging female effigies spill into Lansing
and cops with killing knees abound
and slaughtered trans women miss the mainstream news
and pasty maskless rogues wreak terror everywhere
hope, always fringing, small, equivocal
a star that, in this furor, performs its driftless blinking
—Submitted on 06/25/2020
Koss, a writer and visual artist, holds an MFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Her work has appeared in Cincinnati Review, Hobart, Spillway, Exquisite Corpse, Diode Poetry, and other journals. Twitter @Koss51209969 and Instagram @koss_singular.
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