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Maria Hummel is the author of the novels Wilderness Run, Motherland, Still Lives, Lesson in Red, and Goldenseal (2024) and of House and Fire, winner of the APR/Honickman First Book Prize in poetry. Her work was also featured in the 2012 Pushcart Prize anthology, and she was a finalist in Narrative’s Second Annual Poetry Contest. A former Wallace Stegner Fellow in poetry, Hummel is a professor at the University of Vermont and lives in Vermont with her husband and sons.

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Alderaan

by Maria Hummel
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They died in fire.
They died to prove the might of an empire.
They did not have time to flee or
shield the weak. No moments or months
to see what was coming.
Their trees and fields died with them.
Their hugest mountains and sunny seas.

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  • Some poems just rhyme. But then again, Some actually chime. This one chimes...

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