Back to Issue Twenty-Two.

deciding

BY EDGAR KUNZ

 

Not the sirens. Not the men
dragging canvas, the canceled-
out moon, the ash windblown

and snarling in our hair. Not
the sick crack of the ridge-beam
or the gun-clapped silence

after. Not the four of us, brothers
and our sometimes father,
our breath knit and drifting,

our useless hands. I mean
when I lift Noah, half-asleep,
to my chest and turn

for home. When I look up
at the windows of our own house
and see the flames

cold and writhing
in the glass. That first time
I say it out loud: I’m

gonna go. And the slow walk
up the drive. And my brother
growing heavy

in my arms.

 

Edgar Kunz is a poet from Massachusetts. A 2017 National Endowment for the Arts Fellow, his work can be found widely in journals and magazines including AGNI, Narrative, New England Review, The Missouri Review,Gulf Coast, and Best New Poets 2015 (ed. Tracy K. Smith). He has received fellowships and awards from the Academy of American Poets, the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference, the Sewanee Writers’ Conference, and Vanderbilt University, where he earned his MFA and edited Nashville Review. He is currently a Wallace Stegner Fellow at Stanford University and lives in Oakland, California.

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