Now That We Are Finally at War
Take a school on fire, for instance.
The teachers catch flame
but the lessons won’t burn –
they disperse aerially, over the gym.
Separated from their wardens they’re useless,
like a caretaker of genitals. We are left here,
patting down the trees to make
sure they are real. Remember the season for tubers,
for the dentist in the snow
clapping his gloves together, and for the dead?
What remains
of the dismantled music.
Some of us beat on the fire with our coats:
the whole neighborhood turns out to watch.
Smokeless women who knew us as children,
and men clamming the reservoirs, marking us up
with engineered blows;
we join and become them
and go chirping down to the foundations.
Heaven hovers unfinished,
a few stars come up through the soil.
We learn to mourn, to inquire.
Faith makes us take what we don’t want.
We sully ourselves first, to make sense of it,
and then later,
carrying our parents
through the snow,
notice the exhalations of a rabbit
making the winter mild. Now that we are finally at war,
we can begin.
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Timmy Straw is a writer and musician living in Portland, OR. She also studies Russian at Reed College. Most recently, Timmy was recognized by the Academy of American Poets for the poem ‘Tundra Cinema’ and was commissioned to compose music for a dance company in the Netherlands. She is working on second album. Excerpts of the first, State Parks, can be heard here: www.timmystraw.com.