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in the future will be violence, sometime
a gun will appear in a public place
and bodies will fall, for here, where
my daughter four days old on my chest
sleeps, her fontanel against my chin,
is America. I’ve known it all along.
Sometime bullets will rip through
sheetrock, and someone’s neighbor
will enter a squad-car. Each breath
out through my nose nudges a tuft
of hair above her ear. Sometime a man
will force a woman or girl under
his weight. Or men. This life.
What do we do against such human
guarantees? My daughter stirs, working
fists she doesn’t know are hers.
David Thacker is a PhD candidate in poetry at Florida State University and holds an MFA in poetry from the University of Idaho. A recipient of the Fredrick Manfred Award from the Western Literature Association, his poems have appeared in Ploughshares, Subtropics, The Cortland Review, and elsewhere.