Sampler
Some say cavalry
and others claim |
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).