« Bradley Buchanan »



Her Song of Hunger

I have stopped pretending that life makes sense—
partly because I don’t deserve
the joy that shrieks at me now from her chair,
smeared with Cheerios, applesauce,
and the other unspeakable messes of breakfast.

The scream is high-pitched, intolerable,
but necessary: the child who makes it
is well-fed and happy, and yet she yells
because even a beautiful world
needs a shrill, discordant note.

It’s the newness that brings each day to light
whether we’re ready for it or not—
and we aren’t, though we won’t remember why
when it’s dark again and our ears are still ringing
like holiday bells from her song of hunger.




Amelioration

Every plant that flowers is
a rose, in her utopian
vocabulary.
More is a thing
they always bring whenever you make
the appropriate sign.
All birds are ducks.
No dogs ever bark; instead, they pant.

All drinks are refreshing, even before
they are gulped and gasped at again.
She’s agape
at the beauty of what she has misunderstood
and made all over again for the better.

Amelioration misleads us, who love her
too much to correct her.
Still, we can’t ignore
the truth that someday she’ll outgrow such errors
and live in a world much less perfect and pure
than these first words suggest it must still be, for her.



Bradley Buchanan has published poetry in more than 100 journals worldwide, including Canadian Literature, The Connecticut Poetry Review, Illuminations, The Midwest Poetry Review, The Notre Dame Review, The Portland Review, The Seattle Review, The South Carolina Review, The South Dakota Review, and Whetstone.




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