Unharden, Lord, this heart and teach it, tear
by tear, till it contrives
to pardon those who sneer
at all these children begging for their lives.
Robert West lives in Starkville, Mississippi. His poems have appeared in Light, Poetry, Still: The Journal, Alabama Literary Review, American Life in Poetry, and other venues. Co-editor with Jonathan Greene of Succinct: The Broadstone Anthology of Short Poems (Broadstone Books, 2013), he's also the editor of The Complete Poems of A. R. Ammons, published in two volumes in late 2017 by W. W. Norton.