Landswimmer, fire-eater, living darkling flame
of the alchemists, green vitriol turned ink-
black in the hydrous glimmer of the large
eyes and the ogee of the limber spine:
you are not born in fire, but it lives
in your poison skin. The alkaloids that spark
regeneration aren’t messing around.
They have a heart of nitrogen. You share
your DNA with dynamite and with
the flowering ephemera of fire-
works. You rot-dweller, ember of the damp
and dim, arboreal interstices, you
featherless phoenix, flame-splashed intimate
of Hades and of Hermes, you are cold-
blooded as death itself and equally
indifferent. You know how this goes:
nothing can transform within its own
element, but what’s in our veins consists
of a consistent matrix, constituents of which
kill and renew impartially. You know,
night-niter, skin-breather, light of the force that forces
treasure-trove from toxin: you know we
must conjure gold from mercury within
ourselves, despite the rank corruption all
around us, and despite (or, hey, because
of) poisons we produce. But fire works
that way; it purifies what must be pure,
tempers what’s brittle, stimulates regrowth.
—
Amy Glynn is a poet and essayist whose work appears widely in journals and anthologies including The Best American Poetry (2010, 2012, 2024). She is the author of two full-length poetry collections: A Modern Herbal (Measure Press, 2013) and Romance Language (Able Muse, 2024). She has won the Troubadour Prize, the SPUR Award of the Academy of Western Writers, and Poetry Northwest’s Carolyn Kizer Award, among other honors.
