The lie that a protester shot dead by ICE
in Minneapolis was a terrorist, the lie
that killers set loose on their own cities
are victims, the lie that a poem is a gun.
A poem is not a gun, though a poem
from the pen of Akhmatova or Neruda
or Mandelstam, not one of whom ever
to my knowledge fired a shot, might
in certain conjugations of the stars
lodge in the heart and spread out
across mountains and borders
across languages and the sea and you
can’t shoot it down, or lock it up
or alter its pixels. It is played
on the hollowed reeds of dead bones.
A poem like that is a bomb.
Mary O’Malley’s most recent collection, The Shark Nursery (Carcanet), was winner of the Derek Walcott Prize for Poetry 2025
in Minneapolis was a terrorist, the lie
that killers set loose on their own cities
are victims, the lie that a poem is a gun.
A poem is not a gun, though a poem
from the pen of Akhmatova or Neruda
or Mandelstam, not one of whom ever
to my knowledge fired a shot, might
in certain conjugations of the stars
lodge in the heart and spread out
across mountains and borders
across languages and the sea and you
can’t shoot it down, or lock it up
or alter its pixels. It is played
on the hollowed reeds of dead bones.
A poem like that is a bomb.
Mary O’Malley’s most recent collection, The Shark Nursery (Carcanet), was winner of the Derek Walcott Prize for Poetry 2025
