TORCH

In Cappadocia,

          where they say light

                    cools malaria

          and draws husbands to

the ugly, women

          string trees with evil-eye

                    amulets: catch dawn

          with the hollows

of blue irises.

          Light, we say, is hope:

                    candle, ambulance,

          every torch carried.

So the blank aperture

          of a rice-sized camera

                   swells to rule out cancer,

          and each zebra-pupil

on the twilit caldera

          expands as zebras

                    rest in tandem

          —chin-on-shoulder,

and chin-on-shoulder

          —in case enough hope,

                    collected, repels lions.

          When a student

texted my husband

          to say she’d like to

                    shoot him, the cops said

          all you can do is

watch, watch everything.

          Our bedroom was unlit

                    candles, hemp cloth

          kerosene-heavy

in its sconces,

          the whole earth black, and

                    I lay wide-eyed until,

          rising, hope shrank

the hollow of the world.

Saara Myrene Raappana's poems have appeared in such publications as Cream City Review, Iron Horse Literary Review, [PANK], Subtropics, The Gettysburg Review, and Verse Daily.