Leah Umansky is the author of The Barbarous Century (Eyewear 2018), among others. She earned her MFA in Poetry at Sarah Lawrence College and is the curator and host of The COUPLET Reading Series in NYC. Her poems have appeared or are forthcoming in such places as POETRY, Guernica, The Bennington Review, The New York Times, Pleiades, Poetry Northwest, and the anthologies, The Eloquent Poem (Persea Books) and Misrepresented Peoples (NYQ Books). She is #teamkhaleesi & #teambernard. ---------
Burn
So, this
Is what it is like
To live
In the dark,
Where hate
Is the only fuel
To light the darkness.
The darkness,
Which darkens
Its dark
With hate,
The darkness,
Which is
Darkening now.
It is unbearable
To not see
The way it jags
Its mouth
Spitting
Its tar.
No
Starry night.
No
Beacon of light.
No.
No.
No.
No,
This
Pin
Is stuck
In the root
Of my hope.
This
Storm
Of coal
Blacks out
The sun.
This
Seed
Of hate
Shreds
The radiant,
Shreds
The joy.
This
Is what
Hatred Is.
Its greed
Seething
For us
all