Foreign Affairs — Blackbird Archive

← v21n2, Fall 2022

Even when the house was frozen over

and the lights flickered as if uncertain

of themselves, we knew our losses

were transient as the weather.

Soon we washed our faces again.

We brightened the street with so much power,

when seen from a distance, the windows

blazed like white phosphorus.

Ours was a big country. Somewhere else

the electricity was always cut off

and the water needed boiling.

But who were we to explode our nights

with small concerns? He had patrolled

the shores of places famous for their sand,

and I was a daughter of diplomacy.

war marriage place

Jehanne Dubrow

Jehanne Dubrow is the author of two books of nonfiction, most recently Taste: A Book of Small Bites (Columbia University Press, 2022); nine poetry collections, most recently Wild Kingdom (Louisiana State University Press, 2021); and a book of creative nonfiction, throughsmoke: an essay in notes (New Rivers Press, 2019). Her poems, creative nonfiction, and reviews have appeared in Poetry , New England Review , Colorado Review , The Southern Review , and Blackbird , among others. She is a professor of creative writing at the University of North Texas. Photo by Cedric Terrell