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.
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