Copper Canyon Press is a nonprofit, independent poetry publisher based in Port Townsend, WA. We believe poetry is vital to language and living. Since 1972, Copper Canyon has published extraordinary poetry from around the world to engage the imaginations and intellects of readers. Read more

God's Work

by Tyree Daye

We dug a hole to plant the red maple

in memory of those faces and names we couldn’t recover,

a tree of hearts if I look hard enough

and the shape of my great-great-great grandmother’s heart’s

on our mind. The unnamed one

I want to name. I can’t

even bring her to this poem now, a death that will

remain uncast and altarless. A hole

where a tree does not stand. A whole

people tortured in the name of God. I will save

all the blood from my mother’s body as my testimony

to being here and alive, looking for a freedom

to place my black and ghosts.

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