Once: Poems

The incandescent poems in Once explore violence, loss, and recovery. Invoking both the personal and the civic self, they chart uncertain new beginnings in a shattered nation. What emerges is both a poignant meditation on a daughter's relationship with her mother and a citizen's relationship to her country.

from "Frontier"

*. . . At times,

I felt sick, intoxicated

by BPA and mercury.

At other times I fasted and the stars

stumbled clear from the vault.

Up there, the universe stands around drunk.

I hope the Lord is kind to us,

for we engrave our every mistake . . .*