Origins of Violence
–Jenny George

There is a hole.

In the hole is everything

people will do

to each other.

The hole goes down and down.

It has many rooms

like graves and like graves

they are all connected.

Roots hang from the dirt

in craggy chandeliers.

It’s not clear

where the hole stops

beginning and where

it starts to end.

It’s warm and dark down there.

The passages multiply.

There are ballrooms.

There are dead ends.

The air smells of iron and

crushed flowers.

People will do anything.

They will cut the hands off children.

Children will do anything—

In the hole is everything.

Photo by Ian Yeo on Unsplash

Intelligence
–Jenny George
How easily the deer move between
the field and the woods.
Only we know a thing by its periphery:
the meadow edged with trees.
Or happiness with its horizon of pain.
From inside the house I watch them grazing,
their pooled memory guiding them
into the shade, then into the grass again.