It’s a quiet one, We Have a Pope,
the one about the pope
who doesn’t want to be pope.

Quiet, yes—up to the clap of thunder.
The pope’s in for a downpour,
and yet sun radiates over Rome.

*
Turns out the thunder is my own, our own,
in the night sky outside the theatre.
Reality has infiltrated fiction,

the way real and unreal blurred
over the Aurora, Colorado audience,
into a chaos of bodies on the screen

and bodies in the rows and aisles.
Screams, gun blasts, swat teams,
sirens, smoke surged

from behind the scrim and in front of it.
Real blood shone as rose-bright
as any artful wound in a studio.

More thunder. There’s no telling
the difference between what’s out there
and in here. Mindless celluloid holds up.

*
Behold the antihero, as Zeus bombards,
wounds, kills, and shakes walls, sides,
front and rear, seats of velvet,

until no one on earth knows
what projection is, who the holy father is,
and whether we have one or not.

 

Anne Harding Woodworth is the author of six books of poetry and four chapbooks. Her most recent chapbook is The Last Gun, an excerpt of which won the COG Poetry Award, judged by A. Van Jordan. It has subsequently been animated and can be seen at http://www.cogzine.com/watch. Harding Woodworth’s poetry, essays, and reviews appear in the U.S. and abroad in print and on line, such as in Poet Lore, TriQuarterly, Crannog, and Innisfree Poetry Journal. She lives in Washington, D.C. where she is a member of the Poetry Board at the Folger Shakespeare Library.

Photographs of scenes following Aurora theater shooting by Algr.

In memory of Terence Crutcher

He held his arms high toward a sky that had always
cupped him on cold days and warm.
Music lingered inside him tonight
and everything, even the gun,
was going to be fine—he’d done nothing wrong.
Soon he’d be on his way home.

Here is a fruit for the crows to pluck
For the rain to gather, for the wind to suck.*

The cop used his taser. The cop used her gun.
The road reached up to the man
who fell, as the asphalt pulled him down
into itself, beside the two yellow lines
that divide and cut off—
it’s one way for some, another
for him who slumped alone under sky.
And the bullet spun in his gut.

Here is a fruit for the crows to pluck
For the rain to gather, for the wind to suck.

He’ll never depart this sacred place,
the shirt he wore will remain.
His shoes won’t ever uncobble their stitches,
and he will sing in that street.
The chalk that outlines a shameful truth
will never wash away.

Here is a fruit for the crows to pluck
For the rain to gather, for the wind to suck.

*from “Strange Fruit,” lyrics by Abel Meeropol, sung by Billie Holiday

Anne Harding Woodworth is the author of six books of poetry and four chapbooks. Her most recent chapbook is The Last Gun, an excerpt of which won the COG Poetry Award, judged by A. Van Jordan. It has subsequently been animated and can be seen at http://www.cogzine.com/watch. Harding Woodworth’s poetry, essays, and reviews appear in the U.S. and abroad in print and on line, such as in Poet Lore, TriQuarterly, Crannog, and Innisfree Poetry Journal. She lives in Washington, D.C. where she is a member of the Poetry Board at the Folger Shakespeare Library.

 

Aerial photograph of the killing of Terence Crutcher, by Tulsa Police Department.

“Silencers Now Legal for Hunting”
Charlotte (NC) Observer, August 1, 2013

The task of the poet is “interrogation of silence.”
—George McKay Brown

And so, Silence, what is it you’re hiding
under that sleek and cunning gown?

The gun wears you and you stifle its message.
You do it smugly, Silence, sotto voce.

Still, we know the gun will not be silent—
not until it rusts or jams forever,

not until it drowns in the river or melts
into rake tines for the season.

Are you ready to be stifled, Silence?
Silence wounds. Silence? Can you hear us?

 

 

Anne Harding Woodworth is the author of six books of poetry and four chapbooks. Her most recent chapbook is The Last Gun, an excerpt of which won the COG Poetry Award, judged by A. Van Jordan. It has subsequently been animated and can be seen at http://www.cogzine.com/watch. Harding Woodworth’s poetry, essays, and reviews appear in the U.S. and abroad in print and on line, such as in Poet Lore, TriQuarterly, Crannog, and Innisfree Poetry Journal. She lives in Washington, D.C. where she is a member of the Poetry Board at the Folger Shakespeare Library.

 

Photograph by GMan552.