Divination

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           According to PBS, 475 people were killed in US mass shootings in 2015,

           and nearly 43,000 Americans committed suicide in 2014, the highest rate since 1986.

A website posts the photos, ages, names

of bodies dropped along the gunman’s way.

That one girl seems baptized in her own blood.

Still charlatans elicit prophecy

from stars or palms, from guts or flights of birds,

and say they see in chaos a design.

Do you believe that there are signs that pointed

to her or point to others yet to be

who’ll dangle their angelic vertebrae

from rafters, bridges, closet hooks, doorframes?

The stars are balls of gas, you know. The line

that splits your palm cannot translate to words

of warning, hope, or dread. What’s understood?

Tonight, another head will be anointed.