Donna Vorreyer | Detente | Glass: A Journal of Poetry

Donna Vorreyer is the author of Every Love Story is an Apocalypse Story (Sundress Publications, 2016) and A House of Many Windows (Sundress Publications, 2013) as well as eight chapbooks, including The Girl (Porkbelly Press, 2017). She serves as the reviews editor for Stirring: A Literary Collection and teaches middle school in the suburbs of Chicago.

Also by Donna Vorreyer: Every Love Story is an Apocalypse Story A House of Many Windows The Girl

Previously in Glass: A Journal of Poetry: The Lost Art of Giving Up

Lost & Found
October 2017
edited by Jennifer Met

Donna Vorreyer

Detente

Branches carve commands onto the sky open breathe cathedral a language I must relearn the blue of lakes so different than the one of bruise and bullet My shadow splits in two one at my back black as a fire-scarred clearing the other in front thin and brimming with tree-speckled light All three of us walk past the tiny cemetery twenty three neat headstones beside the lake the coffins I imagine settled in some quiet sandy dark Wind stirs the grass and the Queen Anne’s lace into song each blade pitch perfect Even my shadows sooted brutes reconnect into a sort of applause How can I be lost in a world that cracks its heart to please me pushing life up and up and flowering despite everything? I swallow the bomb in my mouth, feel it swell my belly. Today is not for burning.

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