Saara Myrene Raappana’s poems have appeared in such publications as 32 Poems, Blackbird, [PANK], Subtropics, The Gettysburg Review, and Verse Daily. Born and raised in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan, she served as a Peace Corps Volunteer in southern China and currently lives in windy southwestern Minnesota with her husband. She likes animals, kropsua, ice fishing, and puns. Visit saaramyrene.com for more information.
Manifesto of What Breaks
If window, if scaphoid, if beak
of the rock-struck warbler, then stickball,
then sidewalk, then sling and stone that flies.
They demand splint and plaster, nail
and brace and glue. They beg grass to bend
for a meadow of runners, but all
pliable wishes die inside the bone.
What I’ve forgotten of compromise
I know of sacrifice: The spent
myocardium. The faith that makes
men tear temples down. There’s a boy:
his voice. A woman: the tide that
sweeps her baby in. Frogs into
song. Thunderstorm and then elm. Me:
bridge. Me: milk tooth. Me: awl of dawn
that perforates horizon’s belt.
To get a hundred million parts,
you must ransom one whole.
Just pray fingernail, levee, fever.
I promise to wait for you where
the high-tensile fence divides intact
from fracture, but I’m also cross-knuckled
fingers that say undo, undo.