Originally appearing in Flypaper Poetry Issue V. ![]() Chelsea Dingman’s first book, Thaw, was chosen by Allison Joseph to win the National Poetry Series (University of Georgia Press, 2017). Her second poetry collection, Through a Small Ghost, won The Georgia Poetry Prize and is forthcoming from the University of Georgia Press (February 2020). She is also the author of the chapbook What Bodies Have I Moved (Madhouse Press, 2018). Her work is forthcoming in The Kenyon Review, The Iowa Review, and Triquarterly, among others. Visit her website: chelseadingman.com Lockdown Drill
Keep thinking of the dead babies the dead babies the dead so like the babies at the ends of our fingers the babies that will grow to leave too fast if they live long enough the babies that mothers once held inside like secrets they promised to keep safe—keep thinking that no one is safe if not the babies if not the near-visible bones we grow to outlast us keep thinking nothing lasts while the sun sinks below the late winter horizon the hours of daylight getting longer but only by seconds the bones grown away from us like the babies so close to being the only evidence of angels the babies that moved through the world just yesterday & now move in the dark beyond the windows beyond the glass lake of memory keep thinking there are reasons for everything but do not find a single reason for a bullet to enter a baby like a wind that opens a door it can’t close keep thinking we’d do anything to deadbolt the doors to shut out the wind to put breaths back in their bodies to give them a new history a new exit strategy a world where hate is not a bullet where dead babies aren’t snowflakes fallen to rest under our feet where the babies that live at our fingertips are what we hold instead of what we could be holding when to hold them is never enough is never enough is never enough
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