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POETRY
The Day of the Cardboard Cutters
Some who had made it to the top of our Himalayas
perished there when September was still young, nonchalance still
possible.
At the corner of Dresden and Guernica confettied letters of
intent.
War without borders on Everest, the one stop trade
center, grounded by a rush to fly the big planes.
Merrill Lynch on
strategies to minimize estate shrinkage.
Giant facings dwarfed to
a twist like imported Japanese Bonsai trees among the scattered
fragments of skin and fingers.
Marsh and McLennan offering risk
insurance services.
Our innocence lost after the 15$ martini in
the Greatest Bar on Earth, a thurible of incense to Allah.
Ameritrades Darwin: Survival of the Fittest Trade Simulator.
Window on the World at the top, dining for Lehman Brothers turning soft
dollars into hard money. Vaporized.
Trust Oracles
predictions on negative cash flow.
Bank of America, elevator to
the ninth floor, built on dollars, focused on the bottom line to the
last. Gone.
Berettas 682 Gold exclusive shotgun of the
year.
The electronic zipper flashing moving stock quotes, savvy
fiscal joy, caught in the permanent present.
Nikko Securities
provides quality trade executions.
The day time split firemen,
police, priest in new body bags on the way to the refrigerated
truck.
The Board of Options gives comfort level to your vertical
spread.
Nineteen martyrs speaking scripture undoing creation to
homogenized mulch welcomed to paradise by 72 virgins.
Steady Morgan
Stanley creates customized answers.
Six stories of hell, the city
cemetery at the Bowery burns beneath the girders stenciled Made in
America.
A manual on Dispute Resolution open to page
five.
The heavens rain people, towers fall, and at the ferry the
attendant takes tickets for the quick ride to Jersey.
Salomons
revised -- much revised -- baseline scenarios.
Surprised? We export
our decay: Dallas dense vulgarity, Deep Throats
sensitivity, Rambos geo-political swagger.
The name of the
Hercules Heavy Recovery Tank is survivability.
The ugly American
still wants a Sunday stroll in the park, the hand lolling in the
water behind the canoe. Nonchalance.
If we want the Empire
State Building to stand, give them hope.
-- Fr. Kilian McDonnell, OSB Collegeville, Minn.
Catastrophe
Time-struck! Ruins Simmering in the
Afterglow.
So
Tug me back homeless til the dawn
finds me shivering by the coals.
-- Thomas J. Kessler Turtle Lake, Wis.
Spring Harvest
Cold wet gray March. Im digging in a garden not
my own, getting the beds ready for seed, for the hope of hot summer. I
turn up dirt, the roots of weeds and grasses, an old glass bottle, tags from
last years garden, great lumps of soft dark soil, two worms, and
something red
a new potato, firm, round, perfect, ready for
harvest, unlikely as an Easter egg, but theres another and
another, not one in every spadeful, but every once in a while, as fresh
and edible as daily bread, as grace, harvested where I did not
plant.
-- Sr. Susan Dewitt, CSJP Seattle
2001 in Poetry
2000 in Poetry
1999 in Poetry
Poems should be previously unpublished and limited to about 50
lines and preferably typed. Please send poems to NCR POETRY, 115 E.
Armour Blvd., Kansas City MO 64111-1203. Or via e-mail to
poetry@natcath.org or fax (816) 968-2280. Please include your street
address, city, state, zip and daytime telephone number. NCR offers a
small payment for poems we publish, so please include your Social Security
number.
National Catholic Reporter, November 9,
2001
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