What Rough Beast | Poem for November 1, 2018

Deborah Wanzer
Op-ed

Alive in the crazed and cracked bones of these united
states, in the sawed-off aftermath of one more killing,

in the unveiled images illuminating our very hands,
in the spooked words that rear up, crush, then gallop

off, nostrils flaring with the smell of gunpower. Alive in
the bodies, long concealed, their dark bones knitting

silently on the back stairwell, in the stories of brassy
welts that crawl like worms down the backside of

of history, in the bare-faced ink running from the
whiteness of the page. Alive, in the children, quenched

with unmemorized milk—for their soft ivory bones.



Deborah Wanzer is a Clinical Social Worker.

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