Poetry

Kathy Fagan is the author of several poetry collections, including The Raft, a National Poetry Series selection; Moving & St Rage, winner of the Vassar Miller Prize; and Sycamore (2016). Her work has been included in several anthologies, The Extraordinary Tide: New Poetry by American Women and Poet’s Choice by Edward Hirsch among them. She has served as the director of creative writing and the MFA program at the Ohio State University, where she is a professor of English.

The Children and Other Poems

by Kathy Fagan


The Children

One’s a little heart
palpitation
Nobody knows it but me

One’s a willow
whip with its leaves shorn off
I call it Rosemary


One’s a pirate princess priest
a Look at the horses
curled under the diving board


Paisleys and hexagons each
has a point
to make


Heat
across my shoulder
just under the chin


When they say
We never asked to be born
they mean it sincerely


They mean Look
we are the horizon


How will you punish us
How will you tuck us in
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