What of Fire?

My therapist has approved my drinking of three whiskeys per night,
her eyes forbearing, knowing well the ruthlessness of night.

The sun having fled as a father might flee, my cousin fathered
a narrow terror while he robbed, with a pistol, a fellow citizen one night.

The encouraging lies of a mother are greatly underpaid job-keepers;
slovenly kings have dealt much wrong money to generals and knights.

My childhood was a lengthy scene of make believe and disaccord—
my favorite things being rain and watching my mother’s cigarettes ignite.

What of fire, among its timelessness and musculature, is not
more divine when burning past the open gates of night?

Copyright © 2021 by Marcus Jackson. Originally published in Poem-a-Day on February 8, 2021, by the Academy of American Poets.

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“I always wanted to write a poem that uses the word ‘night’ as a refrain, and what emerged was this interplay between night and fire, between memory and myth.”
—Marcus Jackson