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Sampler

Some say cavalry and others claim
infantry or a fleet of long oars
is the supreme sight on the black earth.
I say it is the one you love...

--Sappho*

Late Night News

Every tired nerve
begins to want a pillow,
my hand reaches to hush
the sterile voice,
a steady whine
of politics, taxes, car wrecks, fires.

So the sudden bulletin charges
through me, static electricity   
in quiet. A child, 12, missing
for weeks, dead parts thrown
in scrub oak woods
two miles from home.

Until the body was found
by a stranger, for days
his mother grieved went
looking cursing silence.

I walk upstairs
to my daughter's room,
search for her warm body
in tangled covers
on the muted bed.

Not caring if I wake her,
I gather her close,
feel the sour breath
of news prowl
like some mythic raptor
hunting for small game.

©KayDay, 1999

"Late Night News" won the Carrie Allen McCray Award for Poetry. 

 


*Excerpt from Sappho's poetry is from the book, Women Poets from Antiquity to Now, by Willis Barnstone,
and Aliki Barnstone (Schocken Books, New York, 1992, second edition).

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