Poem: Josephs, In a Time of No Peace

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.