She’s too pretty
for that,
too fragile for that;
She’s—
too my daughter
for that—
My One Girl.
And no joy
can dispel my frenzy
of the killing machines:
She’s too pretty for
the debris of bodies
of car wrecks or dry overdoses,
the patterns of veins in thin arms;
she’s too fragile for
falls from windows
50 feet up or
the sniper’s bullet;
she’s too my daughter
for blood on tiles and
dismembered parts in fields.
She’s my joy—
My One Girl;
and there’s no use
to frenzy
about unnamed hate
I cannot dispel,
or plastic explosives
so lovingly strapped
with the intimacy only
a lover can know.
This article appears in October 2007.
