Word of the Year: Resilience If your eyes cannot unsee sticks and ashes where homes used to be nor the severed limbs of the dead your nose cannot lose the stench of charred bodies nor the reek of corpses left behind by roiling waters your ears cannot stop ringing with the shriek of incoming shells nor the screams of the stricken your stomach cannot uncoil the clench of helpless fear and rage— sorry. Only the dead—smothered by mudslides swept up by whirlwinds hacked by machetes struck down by missiles—are excused. Survivors must rise up smiling. Oh, not right away— no, no we feel your pain— but soon.
—Submitted on 09/24/2022
Suzanne Osborne has worked in theatre, academia, and the law. Her poems have appeared recently in Newtown Literary Journal, Oddville Press, and Poetry Quarterly. She lives in Forest Hills, NY.
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Editor’s Note: The series title A River Sings is borrowed from “On the Pulse of Morning,” the poem read by Maya Angelou at the inauguration of Bill Clinton in 1993.
