From This Means War (Issue #55)
TENDER
Dear patriot
Dear catastrophe
None of this means what we thought it did
Dear bone fragments
Dear displacement
Dear broken skin
I am in over my head
Dear prisoner
Dear, dear wounded
You have earned our respect
Dear glad hands, curbed dog
Dear perfect object
The same night awaits us
Dear put upon
The day folds over and begins again
Dear bad animal
Dear caged thing
There was something about you
Camille Rankine first full-length collection of poetry, Incorrect Merciful Impulses was published by Copper Canyon Press in January 2016. She is also the author of the chapbook Slow Dance with Trip Wire, selected by Cornelius Eady for the Poetry Society of America’s 2010 New York Chapbook Fellowship. The recipient of a 2010 “Discovery”/Boston Review Poetry Prize and a finalist for The Poetry Foundation’s 2014 Ruth Lilly and Dorothy Sargent Rosenberg Fellowship, she was featured as an emerging poet in the fall 2010 issue of American Poet and the April 2011 issue of O, The Oprah Magazine.