A gnarl of streets
and Purim boys — my sons with striped towels
for their many-colored coats — roam them
until a rock, a boom, debris.
Then a rain of flesh on a door in a city
Because my father’s father’s
father stole a goat, the child of that goatless
father’s father’s father throws a rock, a bomb
past a door in a city.
Time’s debris: both rubble and sorrow
Susan Terris’ new book is “Ghost of Yesterday, New and Selected Poems” (Marsh Hawk Press, 2013). Terris is editor of Spillway magazine and a poetry editor for Pedestal.