AFTER THE BOSTON MARATHON BOMBING
I interrogated the God I claim I don’t believe in
the way the brain questions a leg ripped away at the knee
and will not accept its desertion
the way a severed artery shouts into the void
the way nerves keep firing at phantoms
the way a scared soldier obeys no commander
shooting blindly into the suffering air
—Poets Respond
May 17, 2015
__________
Susan Cohen: “With the trial and sentencing of Dzhokar Tsarnaev, I relived some of the outrage I’ve felt as religion increasingly has been used to justify atrocity. In such a time, I find myself slipping back into the internal conversation of my childhood, bargaining with and wheedling God. This poem is an expression of loss: lost limbs, lost life, lost belief, lost innocence.”
