Drums beat in a foreign land
(specters of burning and ash).
On holy mountains strongmen stand
and grind to earth the past.
Hot-takes stir the electric ether
where words are deeds and seen.
The stars at night, the wordless weather,
over us and them –
listen tonight. Rend your heart
and not your clothing. Keep
each hand in ignorance apart,
as ashes settle, sleep,
and see – for now the time and day
(dusting from a Star)
to take a sacrificial way –
create, renew the art.
—
John Linstrom is a Postdoctoral Teaching Fellow in the English Department at New York University and Poet in Residence at Trinity Lower East Side Lutheran Parish in Manhattan. His poems have recently appeared in North American Review, The New Criterion, Atlanta Review, and elsewhere.
