Miracle Removal

This world is rigged
with ruin.

Rain,
and its remains.

In the yard drought
fills the empty jars—

houses on stilts
still lean.

Sweet as revenge, the grass
devours the abandoned

dream house, unfinished kitchen
where cows now graze.

What angels
I would wrestle.

Kevin Young is the author of Jelly Roll: A Blues, a finalist for the National Book Award and winner of the Paterson Poetry Prize. His epic poem Ardency: A Chronical of the Amistad Rebels is forthcoming.