Poetry by Daniel Brennan

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What sound does a skull make
under the immense heat of hindsight?
Like my father’s George Foreman as it bled

combustion in July’s late slump: there is that snap,
fine sizzle. Bone and blister and the pulse
of disaster run rampant. Does nature speak

the language of walls? Would it recognize
the breach of balance, how one separates truth & lie? I’m not sure
where we learned this reflex, to keep life at arm’s length.   

Hard to fathom, that we paid for this cage. Rage and
concrete built along a nation’s bent spine, barring the future
from horizon. I imagine all manner of creation as they fled

the wildfire; animals locking their eyes with God’s,
their humbled steps as they approached the barricade, as
smoke filled their warming shapes

with after-life in the making. Snap and sizzle. The heat
of hindsight. On late-night news, Fish and Wildlife Service officials
explain how our impressive sentinel,

that sprawling stretch of border,
prevented a menagerie of creatures from fleeing
the fire’s quick tongue, and in doing so, they teach me that fire

cannot speak the language of guilt; only we have evolved
this trait. All that’s left is lingering smoke. The fields
are gone, and the fauna gone, too. Those bodies now an elegy

of ash, the reverberation of our unwitting command: turn back.
Tell me, is this what happens when man plays God? Will God
be punished for the cleverness of his designs?

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Daniel Brennan (he/him) is a queer writer, romantic, and coffee devotee from New York City. When not working his day job in advertising, he can be found in the trenches of queer nightlife (producing and attending more events than his sleep schedule would prefer…). His poetry has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize/Best of the Net, and has appeared in numerous publications, including The Penn Review, Sho Poetry Journal, and Trampset.

Photo by Igor Lepilin on Unsplash