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    The Necessity of Wildfire: Poems
    The Necessity of Wildfire: Poems
    The Necessity of Wildfire: Poems
    Ebook81 pages56 minutes

    The Necessity of Wildfire: Poems

    By Caitlin Scarano

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    About this ebook

    • Prize-winning collection: Ada Limón selected this book as the winner of the newly relaunched Wren Poetry Prize and edited the collection as well. This is the first collection published by Blair since Limón joined Blair as its poetry editor.

    • Powerful emerging voice: Caitlin Scarano is the author of two chapbooks and a previous poetry collection, Do Not Bring Him Water (Write Bloody). They’ve been the recipient of residencies at Vermont Studio Center and have taught classes at Hugo House in Seattle.
    • Blurbs and support from prominent poets: In addition to Ada Limón’s comments on this collection, Denise Duhamel and Kelli Russell Agodon also contributed endorsements. Scarano and Ada Limón will launch this book with a discussion hosted by Elliott Bay Book Company. Duhamel and Agodon have also agreed to events with Scarano.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherBlair
    Release dateApr 5, 2022
    ISBN9781949467796
    The Necessity of Wildfire: Poems

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      Book preview

      The Necessity of Wildfire - Caitlin Scarano

      The houses where they eat the lambs

      Wishbone, forked bone

      between the neck and breast of a bird

      but we are not the bird. Nor the feather, nor

      the stone that brought her warm

      body down. I am the weak point, a snap,

      furcular crack. You are the wish mouthed

      against a wall of air. Worm between the ribs.

      Smeared blood above a door. Dedication

      takes many forms. We stand by these

      bleached altars. Gather veins like soft

      blue thread in a basket of skin. To not harm

      each other is not enough. I want to love you

      so much that you have no before. No mother,

      no bower, no history of burning doors.

      The sea with her rising wet ash. To be marrow

      intimate. A crime committed

      squatting among the reeds. Add grit

      to the skin for texture. Crouch like a toad

      beneath the bowl of your skull

      and turn the skeleton key in your eye.

      Lover, we will know no neighbors. No light

      beyond the teeth of a laughing loon.

      Every disaster branches out from another

      Once, I threw my grandfather’s favorite tabby cat

      off the back porch. She landed low, trembling

      on the bricks my grandmother had laid

      in a herringbone pattern a decade before. I can

      still remember how slick those mossy bricks were

      in the rain, the oak tree choked with ornamental ivy, still

      feel my skin snag on the holly bushes where I tried to hide,

      still smell the birdbath’s fetid water. For years, I thought

      what he did to us was simply what was owed

      for trying to break the legs of that fucking cat. He caught me

      that day, twisted my arm behind my back

      and whispered into my ear: I give you this

      lifetime of fear—a throat full of bees.

      He had no idea

      the gift I would make of it.

      Calf

      I am driving by a field. Mountains crusted with a gold decay

      surround me. My mother called yesterday; they finally have

      a diagnosis. In the field, I notice a cow on her side,

      a trembling mass. Sick paternal aunts and cousins

      I’ve never met. I get out of the car and move toward the wire

      fence. Inherited autosomal recessive mutation. Watch fluids

      rush from her body, matter I cannot name. Slit-lamp

      exam of the eyes. Blood draws. Liver function tests.

      The black calf beside her. One of my father’s

      sisters crawling across the living

      -room floor. Environmental factors. The mother’s low

      groans, her obvious distress. All those symptoms finally

      under a name, a key turning in my brainstem. But to name

      a thing is a trick. The calf a silent creature. Compulsive

      seeking. Lesions on my father’s face. His twitching

      legs. Likely stillborn. I did not attend his funeral. Closer

      to dirt than beast. You probably don’t have it, my mother

      says. Despite harmful consequences. I watch the slipping

      sun. Or could just be a carrier. I return to your car, decide

      to do nothing. Thus, symptomless. Note how the herd

      has already moved on.

      During the Wildfires

      My body cavernquiet as he kisses my hip. This taste.

      Salt of a childhood still on me.

      I

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