Lauren Gordon

Not Every Wound is Red

Last night a killing freeze came
and took the lilacs with it.

Geppetto said he never thought it would end
this way: starving to death in the belly of a whale.

This landscape is wetter. Wind wrinkles
the water, a day moon hangs in the sky.

Chevrons of teenage geese. Earth
has itself in the rocks, its language

like drooping peonies. Squirrels
have snapped the heads of the striped tulips,

a chandelier of pain in the yard. Drone:
the world is searching for another shooter.

Against the knockout roses, my child
swings her arms until her hands become guns.

She spies a carpenter ant carrying another body
like a benediction, and she kills it.