Tallies one more victim in the blast radius when the pencil snaps. Cold wind, low sun. Exodus of bedraggled clouds where the clock tower once stood. No whittling knife, no means to free lead from wood as a lone shape crosses the rubble—blurred, soundless.
-- David Hernandez’s most recent collection of poems is Hoodwinked (Sarabande Books, 2011). His awards include a Pushcart Prize, an NEA Literature Fellowship in Poetry, and the Kathryn A. Morton Prize. His poems have appeared in Ploughshares, The Missouri Review, Field, The Southern Review, and The Best American Poetry 2013. For more information, visit his website at www.davidahernandez.com.