Gary L. McDowell is the author of Weeping at a Stranger’s Funeral (Dream Horse Press, 2014), American Amen (Dream Horse Press, 2010), and They Speak of Fruit (Cooper Dillon Books, 2009), and he is the co-editor of The Rose Metal Press Field Guide to Prose Poetry (Rose Metal Press, 2010). His poems and lyric essays are forthcoming in The Nation, Prairie Schooner, Quarter After Eight, and others. McDowell lives in Antioch, Tennessee, and is an assistant professor of English at Belmont University in Nashville. “Household Fire” first appeared in The Chattahoochee Review..
Household Fire
My dad’s wedding ring
is in a box on my nightstand,
always
The shortest distance between hallelujah
and a tunnel
Trust the body, trust its pushing, trust and then push
My hands would be clean
I’m starving, and none of my costumes
are believable
My road runs parallel to the privacy of a mouse
The night before the song played
the same way every time
Tomorrow the bear commits to sleep
I heard a plane but didn’t see it,
saw a river but couldn’t hear it
Suppose this is true:
if a bird frightens a pregnant woman,
her child will be born
with wings instead of arms
Copyright (c) 2013 by Gary L. McDowell. All rights reserved. On January 31, 2014, at 7 p.m., McDowell will appear—along with poets TJ Jarrett and Jeff Hardin—at Barnes & Noble Vanderbilt in Nashville. The event, part of the Lyrical Brew reading series, is free and open to the public.
Tagged: Poetry
