The visceral new work by Katie Ford, whose poems "possess the veiled brilliance of stained glass windows seen at night" ( The New York Times Book Review ) If you respect the dead and recall where they died by this time tomorrow there will be nowhere to walk. ―"Earth" With gravity and resplendence, Colosseum confronts ruin in the ancient world and in the living moment, from historical accounts and from firsthand experience. Displaced from New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina, Katie Ford returns this powerful report attesting to the storm's ferocity and its aftershock. Ford examines other catastrophes―those biblical, obscured by time, and those that play out daily, irrefutably, in the media. Colosseum is an essential, moving book in its insistence that our fates are intertwined and that devastation does not discriminate. “ Colosseum is a book of polychromatic comprehensions and fiercely kinetic observation. In its vatic stock-taking of event and aftermath, the usual boundaries seem to fall away: interior and exterior, public and private, the intimacies of the close at hand and the overview clarities of distance interweave with precise and startling balance . . . Katie Ford's poetry scours, distills, unsettles, and awakens.” ― Jane Hirshfield Katie Ford is the author of Deposition . Her poems have appeared in The American Poetry Review , Ploughshares , and Poets & Writers . She has taught at Loyola University, Reed College, and now at Franklin and Marshall College. She lives in Philadelphia. COLOSSEUM Poems By Katie Ford Graywolf Press Copyright © 2008 Katie Ford All right reserved. ISBN: 978-1-55597-501-2 Contents BEIRUT................................................3I. StormFLEE..................................................9TELL US...............................................11RARELY................................................12EARTH.................................................13ARK...................................................14FISH MARKET...........................................15VESSEL................................................16HE SAID...............................................17TOLSTOY'S STORM.......................................18SNOW..................................................19II. VesselTHE SHAPE OF US.......................................23CROSSING AMERICA......................................24DIVISION..............................................25EARTH.................................................26INJURY................................................27THE VESSEL BENDS THE WATER............................28TESS..................................................29THE SINGING...........................................30FLAG..................................................31WHAT WE GET...........................................32SPRING WISH...........................................33COLISEUM THEATER......................................34CEMETERY..............................................35RAISED VOICE..........................................36KOI...................................................37III. ColosseumOVERTURE..............................................43COLOSSEUM.............................................44SNAKES................................................48ROSE..................................................49DUOMO.................................................50EASTER EVENING........................................52EARTH.................................................53DIVINING STICK........................................54SEAWATER, AND OURS A BED ABOVE IT.....................55EARTH, THIS FIRELIT LANTERN...........................57NOTES.................................................59 Chapter One FLEE When the transistor said killing wind I felt myself a small noise a call sign rubbed out but still live where light cut through the floorboards and don't you think I dreamed the light a sign didn't I want to cross the water of green beads breaking where one saw the other last where the roof was torn and the dome cried out that the tearing was wide and far and this is not just a lesson of how to paint an X upon a house how to mark one dead in the attic two on the floor didn't I wish but didn't I flee when the cries fell through the surface of light and the light stayed light as if to say nothing or what do you expect me to do I am not human I gave you each other so save each other. TELL US the radio is coming in all over us a caller asks what will be done for the animals of the zoo the oil rigs at sea the stranded of the dome first the storm will take all lanterns all flags it will begin at 600 hours end at 1300 at which time your absolute nakedness the barest accident of you will stand before its organized eye therefore ready yourself but do not panic you cannot be ready RARELY Rarely do I remember another month, August. Rarely another day do I remember. I threw tarps