The Light
by Holly Day

  1. We wait for the bombs to feel us out
  2. pass the potatoes, say grace over the odd angels
  3. that have watched over us for years
  4. through the stained-glass windows of old churches
  5. through the eyes of Orthodox iconography. This is a moment of peace
  6. that will never come again.
  1. Through the windows, the strength of distant concussions
  2. fold trees in half, take grain silos and snap power lines.
  3. We turn up the gas, clear the dinner table
  4. I put a knife in your hand, just in case.
  1. The sky grows as dark as if seen through closed eyes
  2. windows shake and fly apart. Hands
  3. over their eyes, I stretch out next to the children
  4. tell them it’s just the sound of His voice, there’s nothing
  5. to be afraid of, it’ll all work out in the end.
Packingtown Review – Vol.15, Spring 2021

Holly Day's poetry has recently appeared in Asimov’s Science Fiction, Grain, and Harvard Review. Her newest poetry collections are Where We Went Wrong (Clare Songbirds Publishing), Into the Cracks (Golden Antelope Press), Cross Referencing a Book of Summer (Silver Bow Publishing), and The Tooth is the Largest Organ in the Human Body (Anaphora Literary Press).

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