each Palestinian child killed
is someone I will never know
& though you might say
I wouldn’t know them anyway
because before they’d have grown up
I’ll be dead, still, we might have exchanged
fleeting bursts of air, theirs
blown here from Rafah in Gaza, mine
flown there from Salisbury in Vermont
world travelers, sibling orphans
they bombed into fragments
or found frozen in rain-soaked tents
I shriveled inside worn garments
we who die in our killing times
Ovid’s creation story is so predictably male —
natus homo est — I expect Ovid saw homo
as a white Roman male, a norm from which
other colors & genders deviate. A priori,
I reject homo & translate Ovid’s phrase as
humans are born, not being snootish enough
to opt for humanity is born, also not quite yet
determined to feminize Ovid, nudge him
toward woman is born — problematic, since
my preferred future is a gender-irrelevant
world where woman is as impertinent as man.
