Omens and dreams and their designated decipherers played an important part in naming children in pre-Islamic Arabia through practices refashioned in every era that persist today. A Prophet whispers to a grandmother, and another Muhammad is born.

In the woods behind our first house, that picketless patch
of silence where we buried a precious yipper named Pinka,
seven years of christmas trees laid to RIP in the grip of kudzu

“I suppose a poem being “ready” is a matter of instinct. One could always revise and revise until the heart of the poem stops beating, until the themes get muddied. I stop revising and begin submitting when a poem makes me smile, when something inside me leaps and kicks.”

Running’s greatest strength is Mari’s trajectory from observer to partaker in her realization that, even as a young teen, she can make a difference.