IN THE GREAT SNARL

by Karen Neuberg


We’re tracking the stained footsteps long-erased, recast
as if new. We’ll never stop, oh, no; it’s in our nature
and our nature can’t be wrong. For the enemy
is the enemy as long as it takes, until it switches on
political whim. Then we’ll claim their faces as our own,
recognize the mingling of our bloods, weep on the stones
and hillocks of mass graves. Someone set this so; it is
to be the way and way to be. War and torture pecking
at our eyes. Our sore souls scream for peace on earth
but we don’t know how to make it so.


Karen Neuberg’s work has appeared in Barrow Street, Blue Fifth Review, canwehaveourballback, Columbia Poetry Review, Diner, Elixir, Phoebe, Shampoo, and The Diagram. She lives in Brooklyn and West Hurley, NY. She paints and writes poetry and short fiction.