A Thought | Thomas E. Kennedy
The Funeral Director’s Wife | Grace Wells
Infidelity, Almost | Edward Mc Whinney
The Revolutionary | Amy Groshek
What Walt Whitman Said | Liz Prato
A Discourse on Time | Luke Evans
Plum Island | Andrew Coburn

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The Revolutionary | Amy Groshek


They came to me broken, thousands,
and I sent each one away healed.
Many wounds I could not describe

except to say they were ungodly:
were the wounds of men unto men.
The hardest wasn’t to take each pain, each

wound unto myself, but to know,
in the instant of touch, who again
would be beaten, maimed, raped.

I had simply made them serviceable,
and each, having yearned so long, 
turned back with joy to the cruelest 

work or love. Of pain they asked
no question, no question at all.
I wanted a revolution. But the sick

do not care for words. Then Pilate
held me to the crowd and they shouted
to kill me. As if in the end of the healer,

the end of the wounds.
	


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commentary | poetry | fiction | chicago | winter 2007   

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