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      February 6, 2013EnlightenmentRose Kelleher

      The knowledge that napalm exists,
      that it was designed to do what it does
      and that we use it knowingly, can’t be
      unlearned. Such knowledge burns itself
      into the brain’s soft tissue, a burn so slow
      it can last for 40 years and keep on burning.
      Down through the complex network
      of surface squiggles, into the mind’s meat
      it sinks like a live coal, and keeps on sinking.
      It burns through philosophy, it burns through art.
      Wet sentiment yields with a hiss; a wisp of mist,
      then nothing. The knowledge of napalm eats
      Dostoyevsky for breakfast and keeps on eating,
      burns every cross there is and keeps on burning,
      the unthinkable, once thought, forever thinking,
      more merciless than the Viet Cong, tunneling
      down to the part of us that’s hard and lasting.

      from #37 - Summer 2012

      Rose Kelleher

      “Why do I write? To be honest, I don’t write purely for the love of words, the way poets are supposed to. Usually I write because I have something to say. When I wrote ‘Enlightenment’ I was feeling overwhelmed, thinking of all the evil in the world. It’s just too much to process. Admitting that, and writing a depressing poem about it, is a lot like praying. You know it’s useless, but you do it anyway.”

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