After Watching World News
Some days my body carries less of the holy
more of the grief it can’t help but hold.
On days I don’t know how to take
one more of the world’s sorrows
I make of myself a light, needle-colored
under a moon threaded in funeral cloth.
When my fifteen year old granddaughter tells me,
I’m working on becoming a kinder, better person,
last night’s news lingers in my head: hostages,
bodies, guns, the thistle & thrum of all we’ve done.
Why do we hold back our good will?
The one thing we could give of ourselves.
Who knew despair could be a palpable thing?
Yet, the heart allows both light & dark to enter it
as it commits & contracts to the ocean of its wants.
On any given bankrupt morning I might finally stop asking,
where’s my stuff to the universe.
Do I really think I’m owed something?
But, if it’s still a thing, I’m in the marketplace for gratitude.
Isn’t the enough I have, more than enough?
As for hope, I position it mid-height on my tongue,
mid-day in my body, mid-prayer in my burning hands.
*
Louisa Muniz lives in Sayreville, N.J. She holds a Master’s in Curriculum and Instruction from Kean University. Her work has appeared in SWWIM, ONE ART, Palette Poetry, Gyroscope, Tinderbox Journal, PANK Magazine, Shark Reef and elsewhere. She won the Sheila-Na-Gig 2019 Spring Contest for her poem Stone Turned Sand. Her work has been nominated a few times for Best of the Net and a Pushcart Prize. Her debut chapbook, After Heavy Rains by Finishing Line Press was released in December, 2020. She is presently working on her second chapbook.
Splendid