by Gail White
God bless the oysters
I can eat alive
because they have no heartbeat.
God bless the feral cats
who have no control
over their fertility,
and the women who had it once
but lost it.
God bless the migrant children
who die in US custody
whose lives don’t matter
because they are post-unborn.
God bless the deer
To the hunters,
The fish to the net,
The faithful to their homes,
The children to their mothers’ arms.
Gail White is a formalist poet with work in many journals, including Measure, Light, First Things, and Hudson Review. She is a two-time winner of the Howard Nemerov Sonnet Award. Her latest book Catechism was published in 2016 by White Violet Press.