Miss Peach: The War Years

[#1]

Today's entry in our month-long celebration of National Poetry Month is by Catie Rosemurgy, from her book The Stranger Manual, recently published by Graywolf.

Miss Peach: The War Years

She's been lobbed,

and like the other grenades

can't help but like

the deeply American ache

where the pin used to be.

She is a squat,

angry seed that blooms

into absence, into big flowers

of what was, a trick fruit

that creates its own mouth,

a wild eye that blinks

its own face away. Luckily,

she feels only the slightest tingle

of the empiricism, of the impact she'll have

wherever she lands.

She's had to insinuate herself

into everything else: the concept

of time, the elaborate and ruthless

culture of love, the life cycle

of trees. But the space that must be

cleared for her, the threat

she poses to other living things,

this is her radius.

Catie Rosemurgy, "Miss Peach: The War Years" from The Stranger Manual. Copyright © 2010 by Catie Rosemurgy. Reprinted with the permission of Graywolf Press, Minneapolis, Minnesota. www.graywolfpress.org