Begin
Someone dreams of fire in a field
In a cold house, in the winter,
your head is on the table,
your mind, busily constructing a machine
Something taps at the door,
calls you out from the deep
reverie of making and unmaking
The wood is dark and full of veins
lost in its haze, you glimpse a shape
through the thick trees of night
And hear the distant sound of an engine moving,
its pistons and gears,
heavy with shudders and sighs
How it seems that you’ve always heard it coming,
long before it appears, the embodied will
of the earth set to flame, a metaled desire
The semblance of an unknown name
you’ve carried home with you, unwittingly—
all night, your body singing
In the hallway mirror,
something stirs in the corner of your eye
and you cannot say what it is
Only that it grows
like a wildfire in a storm,
that it tastes of steam
That you would lay every number in the world on end
and still, it would not be enough--
the heavens opening wide their spiraling arms
And the dark heart within yearning
to pull everything back
while you stand on the threshold, believing.
Previously published in Babbage's Dream (Sundress Publications, 2017). Note: to view this poem as intended, it's best to use a non-mobile device with Chrome.
Neil Aitken is the author of Babbage’s Dream (Sundress Publications, 2017) and The Lost Country of Sight (Anhinga Press, 2008), which received the Philip Levine Prize, as well as the poetry chapbook, Leviathan (Hyacinth Girl Press, 2016). A former computer games programmer and a past Kundiman Fellow, he holds an MFA in Creative Writing from the University of California, Riverside and a PhD in Literature and Creative Writing from the University of Southern California. He is the founding editor of Boxcar Poetry Review, curator of Have Book Will Travel, and editorial board member of Poetry East West.
www.neil-aitken.com
Other projects:
www.boxcarpoetry.com | www.thelitfantastic.com | www.havebookwilltravel.com
RSS Feed
