XII. Justice

Everything Is A Wound
by Jonny Teklit

The news is a wound.
My dinner softens in the boiling wound.
I find wounds in the vacuum bag
after its motor, wounded, sputters
dust and pennies.
I take them, the copper wounds,
and toss them into a well
which is also a wound.
Wishing is a wound.
The good weather is a wound.
At the day’s first wound, the birds
whistle their own wounds
into a kind of music.
The mirror reflects only wounds
which means it, too, must be a wound.
Every badge is a wound.
Every law is a wound.
Even the victories have become
a kind of wound.
In school, we were taught to
show our wounds for full credit—
so, for every question, I wrote
my name.

Jonny Teklit (he/him) is a recipient of the 2019 Aliki Perroti and Seth Young Most Promising Young Poet Award. His work has appeared in The Atlantic, The New Yorker, The Academy of American Poets, Catapult, The Adroit Journal, and elsewhere. He is currently an MFA candidate in poetry at UW-Madison.