My Daughter Explains the New World
It cannot be found in the dreams
of men, she says, holding her hands up
as if to say that experiment has ended.
If men want to exist in the new world, she adds,
directions must be translated for them.
Like code? I ask. Like a gift, she says.
The new world has a bakery.
When people don’t have money
they eat the same cinnamon bread
as the people who have money
and no one goes live to ask whether it’s fair.
There’s a library. It is just like the libraries
of this world, except the librarians
are finally lions. Without using my hands
or voice, I applaud her emphasis
on the word finally. When I ask where
the new world is, she says it travels.
It has to, she says. It appears only for those
who need it most, and only when
their lives here are no longer habitable.
I try to put my finger on the moment
we began discussing war and death.
In the new world, she says, peace
isn’t always a metaphor for death.
Abby E. Murray (they/them) is the editor of Collateral, a literary journal concerned with the impact of violent conflict and military service beyond the combat zone. Their first book, Hail and Farewell, won the Perugia Press Poetry Prize and was a finalist for the Washington State Book Award, while their second book, Recovery Commands, won the Richard-Gabriel Rummonds Poetry Prize and was released by Ex Ophidia Press in 2025. They live in the Pacific Northwest for now.
