“After the Boston Marathon Bombing” by Susan Cohen

Susan Cohen

AFTER THE BOSTON MARATHON BOMBING

I interrogated the God            I claim I don’t believe in

the way the brain questions a leg            ripped away at the knee

and will not accept            its desertion

the way a severed artery shouts            into the void

the way nerves keep firing            at phantoms

the way a scared soldier            obeys no commander

shooting blindly            into the suffering air

Poets Respond
May 17, 2015

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Susan Cohen: “With the trial and sentencing of Dzhokar Tsarnaev, I relived some of the outrage I’ve felt as religion increasingly has been used to justify atrocity. In such a time, I find myself slipping back into the internal conversation of my childhood, bargaining with and wheedling God. This poem is an expression of loss: lost limbs, lost life, lost belief, lost innocence.”

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