Theme Thursday = Fire

Song of Smoke


To watch you walk
cross the room in your black

corduroys is to see
civilization start--

the wish-
whish-whisk

of your strut is flint
striking rock--the spark

of a length of cord
rubbed till

smoke starts--you stir
me like coal

and for days smoulder.
I am no more

a Boy Scout and besides,
could never

put you out--you
keep me on

all day like an iron, out
of habit--

you threaten, brick--
house, to burn

all this down. You leave me
only a chimney.



Kevin Young

.

I love Kevin Young's story telling style of American poetry.

He was born 1970 in Lincoln, Nebraska. His awards and honors

include a Stegner Fellowship in Poetry at Stanford University, a

Guggenheim Foundation Fellowship, a MacDowell Colony Fellowship,

and an NEA fellowship. He taught at the University of Georgia and

at Indiana University, my daughter's alma mater. (yay IU!)

Currently, he is the Atticus Haygood Professor of English and

Creative Writing and curator of the Raymond Danowski Poetry

Library at Emory University and lives in Boston and Atlanta.

photo courtesy of Flickr, Sloney69