Day 2, Poet 2: Neil Aitken

​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