Leslie McGrath’s poem gives us an intimate look into a person’s mind in the immediate aftermath of the Boston Marathon bombings that took place on April 15, 2013. Listen to McGrath read “Shock Wave” and read along, below.

Leslie McGrath reads “Shock Wave”

Shock Wave

By Leslie McGrath

Boston Marathon, 2013

Blow black powder and shrapnel blow a deathwind

then follows another kind of detonation, this one inward.

In the brain’s chapel one pearled sulcus is aroused by sudden fear while others snap into lockdown.

There are moments when survival depends on suspicion and the mind’s ear turns vigilante

gum heard as gun coffee heard as coffin dread as dead

There are moments that become eras Like this one         like this.

 

Leslie McGrath is a poet and literary interviewer. She is the author of “Opulent Hunger, Opulent Rage” (2009), a poetry collection, and two chapbooks, “Toward Anguish” (2007) and “By the Windpipe” (2014). McGrath’s latest book is a satiric novella in verse, “Out From the Pleiades” (Jaded Ibis, 2014). She teaches creative writing and literature at Central Connecticut State University and is series editor of The Tenth Gate, a poetry imprint of The Word Works press in Washington, DC.

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