"the smoke of the country went up" by Iain Haley Pollock

View this email on a browser Forward to a friend August 3, 2017   the smoke of the country went up   Iain Haley Pollock

Drop fire from the sky but don't name me as reason. My sister is lost on the longest lit road   in the world. She wanders into shoe stores the hour before close and chews the stock   back to rawhide. My father's workshop tools have broken into open rebellion—he worked   and worked them to the bone. Any second now the circular saw will churn through the basement door   and into the kitchen, gnawing the floor to spit and sawdust. Out West my cousin has soldered   the mirrored lenses of police-issue sunglasses over his ocular cavities. All he sees is wrong.   Alert the Department of the Interior: our enemies are inside the fence. Drop fire from the sky   but don't expect it to purify their hate. Or, if it does, it'll burn me clean with the rest.   Here's my hope for salvation: when the stranger comes knocking, open my arms wide with the door   and give him whatever he takes.            Copyright © 2017 Iain Haley Pollock. Used with permission of the author. About This Poem   "This poem attempts to puzzle out some of the following questions: In our secular age, from where does the right of total judgment derive? What are the potential personal consequences and ethical implications when my nation's military kills in the name of my safety? Personally and nationally, should we be warier of internal or external threats? What if I embrace strangers rather than desolate them outright?" —Iain Haley Pollock   Iain Haley Pollock is the author of Spit Back a Boy (University Georgia Press, 2011). He teaches at Rye Country Day School in Rye, New York, and runs a poetry workshop at the Solstice Low-Residency MFA in Creative Writing Program at Pine Manor College.   Photo credit: Rachel Eliza Griffiths Poetry by Pollock   Spit Back a Boy (University Georgia Press, 2011) "One Week Later in the Strange" by Elizabeth Alexander "Persistence of Vision: Televised Confession" by Solmaz Sharif "Epistemology of the Phone Booth" by Gregory Pardlo Help Support Poem-a-Day   If you value Poem-a-Day, please consider a monthly donation or one-time gift to help make it possible. Poem-a-Day is the only digital series publishing new, previously unpublished work by today's poets each weekday morning. The free series, which also features a curated selection of classic poems on weekends, reaches 450,000+ readers daily. Thank you! Thanks for being a part of the Academy of American Poets community. To learn about other programs, including National Poetry Month, Poem in Your Pocket Day, the annual Poets Forum, and more, visit Poets.org.   You are receiving this e-mail because you elected to subscribe to our mailing list. If you would like to unsubscribe, please click here.   © Academy of American Poets 75 Maiden Lane, Suite 901, New York, NY 10038