Poetry by Christian Arthur

                         ​Alexander Rabb CC



Survival Merit Badge

Start with the cruise up Route 119, the highway hilly
like a roll of paper compressing inside a closing fist. 
Our careless joy turned three dimensional at a 711, 
buying cigarettes, blunt wraps, and the cheap vodka
from a trunk out back, because Eric was already 21.

Consider the banter of boys can be twig-like. A whistle
of air in the car as it accelerates. Name it harmless
as dead branches, found on the ground and always there.
 
The surface of the lake broke by a bottle cap like a fish
spine snapping against a rock. Is all violence practice?
I regret how something feels good about kindling giving
way to a force, such as when the sun sinks like alcohol,
an orange ball resting inside the body and each sparring
forearm is a log angled together into a triangle, bold

as an arrowhead pointed up at the fur of the night sky.

Do you know the most important ingredient needed
to build a fire? Time. A slab of it, clear as Caldwells 
we called nail polish remover. I want to scrape it off,

who I grew up as, bury it under paint. A ghost story
that cannot be shelved. The night we danced, drank
the whole thing, you, me, and the fire, pouring shots
onto the blue tongue. No one will believe it woke up.
I’m getting better at talking about feelings, but some
things remain double vision and unholdable. Seriously,

we literally talked to a fire for hours, until we were 
too drunk to leave our seats and it died and we 
understood we were actually alone. Then a dread
descended. Addiction can be like that. Brotherhood 
as well. They grow and grow, crackling in the same
stone pit. They can lean together, each the other’s fuel.

​

Christian Arthur is a poet, teaching artist, and public health social worker in recovery from addiction. His poems have been published in Meat for Tea and The Watermark. Currently he is a Staff Poetry Reader for The Adroit Journal and previously he received fellowships from the Poetry Foundation’s Poetry Incubator and DreamYard’s Rad(ical) Poetry Consortium. He’s on Twitter: @ChrisColdWater

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