God’s Reply
by Lisa Caloro

1. Your words are inaudible,
2. a foreign language with no translation.
3. I concentrate on eel and violet,
4. beetle and willow reed,
5. their tongue-less silence soothes.
6. Where did you hide your children?
7. I hear them breathing
8. through locked doors;
9. Strain to hear their voices,
10. tiny music boxes
11. filtering through the air
12. like alarmed chickadees,
13. their blood giddy --
14. but they are stricken
15. oceans lapping at my feet.
16. I am swallowed
17. by injured whales, galaxies
18. hiding inside them
19. a welcomed static.

1. These razed fields
2. sleep in my lungs
3. like held breath, dandelion
4. ash paves my throat.
5. Surrounded by burning bushes,
6. angry fires singe my eyebrows,
7. the smoke an acrid prayer.
8. My hands cannot hold
9. these sorrows, these pulverized
10. hymns whisper through my fingers,
11. tingling stars poke holes
12. in my only escape.
13. There is no peace here;
14. knees ache from concrete bruises,
15. a shotgun nuzzles my temple,
16. a world I didn’t create
17. bellows in my ears.