Poem: The Sky Sheds Our Violence

The Sky Sheds Our Violence

On the Fourth of July we did our best:
rockets climbed higher and higher
until they burst into fireworks—
no, cathedral domes, vaulting
the blackness with sizzling streamers.
But those streamers fell all the way down
into monstrous smoke spider legs
landing all around us.
The stars burned,
not even knowing our names.

This article appears in May 2007.