Examination Questions, with Contradiction
/Devon Miller-Duggan
Why only red birds of commerce flying across the black ground?
Profit or Prophet: Whose feet burn with each step?
Where are the million mouths of want, or war? Will sons return?
To whom do you give your hands that your children might live?
Is weather still to arrive, or do storms only tempest inside the skulls of the living?
Who hears the sirens more closely—those waiting or those who pierce their own eardrums?
Which stones speak truth?
Which mouths swallow trees?
Where do wings fall so that we may gather them?
When can I see my own face without fear?
What are these talons of air surrounding me? What am I to know?
What is the fabric of sacrifice? The garment of watchfulness?
Why this sky? This season? These pages and days without answers?
Oh, pronounce our road, our cleansing, our ruins.
Let the black birds against a red sky be the warning.
Author’s note: I was thinking on the anniversary of my god-son's death in Helmand province about the persistence of war and the way we never learn to ask the right questions or see the warnings properly.
Devon Miller-Duggan has published poems in Margie, The Antioch Review, Massachusetts Review, and Spillway.She teaches at the University of Delaware. Her books include Pinning the Bird to the Wall(Tres Chicas Books, 2008), Alphabet Year, (Wipf & Stock, 2017), The Slow Salute, Lithic Press Chapbook Competition Winner, 2018).
