Once Our Home

To the eight-year-old who lost her home in the bombing

by Pam Laskin

Flesh
a bandage
for brokenness,
gangrened grief
you can’t treat
since my baby brother
died
in the arms of Mama and Papa
all clinging to splinters of stone
once our home.

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Pam Laskin is the former director of the New York City Poetry Festival at City College, where she taught children’s writing in the MFA program. She is the published author of five books of poetry and three young adult novels. Most of her recent writings are political, and this includes YA novels.