Kablooey is the Sound You'll Hear

A mother never wants to hear an explosion inside the house.

Debra Marquart is a Distinguished Professor of Liberal Arts and Sciences at Iowa State University and Iowa’s Poet Laureate. Marquart is the author of six books including an environmental memoir of place, The Horizontal World: Growing Up Wild in the Middle of Nowhere a collection of poems, Small Buried Things: Poem, and a short story collection, The Hunger Bone: Rock & Roll Stories. Marquart’s work has been featured on NPR and the BBC and has received over 50 grants and awards including an NEA Fellowship, a PEN USA Award, and a New York Times Editors’ Choice commendation. She is Senior Editor of Flyway: Journal of Writing & Environment, and teaches in ISU’s MFA Program in Creative Writing and Environment and in the Stonecoast Low-Residency MFA Program. Her next book, Gratitude with Dogs Under Stars: New & Collected Poems, is forthcoming from New Rivers Press in 2021.

“Kablooey is the Sound You’ll Hear,” can be found in the anthology, Bullets into Bells: Poets & Citizens Respond to Gun Violence.  Eds. Brian Clements, Alexandra Teague, and Dean Rader. Beacon Press, 2017: 112-113.