by Geoff Anderson

I fell asleep to slow aches
sung through our windows

as they rode in on drafts
of wind as a child,

no two warnings quite
the same. I used to believe

in being saved until I woke
to ash, the brownstone

by our firehouse dripping
mascara up its brick,

the ribs of the roof
pinning the sky in protest.

Look out the burnt window
to the fire engines, quiet

inside the station, the way
light kept silent above

the water’s surface that summer
my brother pushed down

on me in the pool and
my breath boiled. That summer,

they buried the house;
I looked for a marker it lived—

glass, a fracture of wood.
My hands grit when they rubbed.


Geoff Anderson curated Columbus, OH’s first poetry shows for biracial writers (The Other Box), translation (Lingua Franca), and immigration (New World). He’s a Callaloo fellow and his chapbook, Humming Dirges, won Paper Nautilus’s Debut Series (2017). He has work on/forthcoming in Tinderbox, Juked, Southern Indiana Review, and www.andersongeoff.com.