DEAR JOHN,
We are marching in Washington against War in Iraq
and you are the bravery
I want to be.
It is fall and there are no cherry blossoms left.
We don’t feel their absence.
Only the frenzy of bodies marching
in Washington. I am following you. It is 2005
and I am in love with being
next to you. You don’t know,
I never told you, that July I tried to swallow all the flies
but didn’t die. Only four months later,
and I was in love with marching
in Washington, holding my peace sign,
following after you.
John, I can’t stop seeing you hang
from the geolab ceiling.
It’s not true. I wasn’t there. I don’t know
what clothes you wore,
if your hair was bleached like the obit pic.
I keep saying this isn’t even my death
to grieve, really,
and grieve a little more.
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STEVIE EDWARDS is a poet, editor, and educator. Her first book, Good Grief, received the Independent Publisher Book Awards Bronze in Poetry and the Devil’s Kitchen Reading Award. Her poems have appeared in Verse Daily, Rattle, Indiana Review, Devil’s Lake, Salt Hill, and elsewhere. She is the Editor-in-Chief of Muzzle Magazine and an Assistant Editor at YesYes Books. She is currently a Lecturer at Cornell University, where she recently completed her MFA in creative writing.
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