The Third Day of Christmas

Out of the mouths of Holy Innocents

the wailings of our weakness,

our Herod knees bent now

the better to swallow

the words we’ve wallowed in,

the tug-and-pull of the womb

across the clinic’s lintel.

In Rama there is weeping,

in Charleston, in Bismark,

in Portland, in Trenton,

in Pittsbugh, in New Orleans,

in Santa Rosa, in the thin sac that holds us

from heaven. There is weeping

for the waste we so covetously cradle

as our rights, that we so vehemently sing

as the holy holly bough is breaking.