Loading...
Loading...
Click here if you don’t see subscription options
Amit MajmudarApril 15, 2015
Their shadows flickered and stretched to the west.
The future fixed its lidless eye
On concrete switchgrass, furrows of asphalt.
Telescopes, searchlights aimed on high
Shot the flare of the mind at darkness.
We stood on the moon but failed to scry
The star called wormwood.
 
The signal changed, but the curbs stayed full
Though seconds before the world was spinning.
Why shouldn’t a light announce the end
When light alone pronounced the beginning?
Men in nooses of patterned satin
Welcomed this end to wanting and winning,
This star called wormwood.
 
The women who stood on pencil heels,
The cubicle drones of the moneycomb
Were tired of sugar, tired of gold.
They looked to the blaze as a blessed home.
This star was a mercy, this stella maris
That sheltered them in its fusion dome,
This star called wormwood.
 
We raise our arms against the rain
And find the lines on our palms erased.
The dew is puddle-gray and bitter,
But we learn to love the aftertaste
Here where loosestrife meadows the square
And flash-blind featherless sparrows praise
The star called wormwood.
Comments are automatically closed two weeks after an article's initial publication. See our comments policy for more.

The latest from america

Pope Francis published official documents on the environment, the family, young people and more. Here is a list of some of his major documents.
Who is in charge? When is the papal funeral? And when is the conclave?
When the cardinals voted to elect Jorge Mario Bergoglio as the 265th successor of St. Peter on the evening of March 13, 2013, few of them imagined what kind of pope he would be.
Gerard O’ConnellApril 21, 2025
Just halfway through his period of convalescence, Pope Francis not only appeared on the central balcony of St. Peter’s Basilica on Easter Sunday to give the Urbi et Orbi blessing—to the city of Rome (“urbi”) and to the world (“orbi”)—but he also drove among the crowd in his jeep.
Gerard O’ConnellApril 20, 2025