Poetry by Samuel Burt

             Christopher Sessums CC




​Lighting a Bonfire After Casting His Ashes

Cold air sucks the meat from our knuckles,
and threads of sparks spit 

above the backyard of our parent’s home,
where a flag thumps against

wind sound. Grief, terminal, is contagious. 
I cry beside family 

and nothing tastes clean. 
The fire takes of our breath, full soft, 

with its bare palms hot across our faces, 
while the night begins its rites, 

clawing dry leaves from the mud. 
We, and all the earth’s hands, are restless. 

The dead, less so; 
they pass, with the breeze, through our fingers, 

as if knowing where they are bound.
The heroes of our time 

have already moved to the cities they’ll die in. 
Before parting, 

we make promises, extending ourselves 
toward something as endless 

as the way we love—are loved, 
us travelers

through the loose grip of future tense.





After Rain

The evening shivers like a fist of water,
walnut trees dropping 
pins of light through the darkening sky.
Steeped in the swell 
of crickets, starlight, and porch wine, 
I thread grass 
through my bare toes
in the middle of the back lawn.
And the scent of near fire
gestures toward autumn,
as I watch its thrum of a glow
hem the bark of the thinning trees.

I demand 
nothing more from this
life. The faith
of smoke and echo. 

The air is as thick as the oil
dripping onto charcoal
across the alley, where laughter
splashes over the trees
like gold. I hold it 
like a pinch of skin 
that is real,
and the moments that will outlive this
begin to take shape 
the way the edge of a cloud 
becomes possible
in the moon’s grip. 





Graduation 

We forget what we mean to say. 
On this street, in houses of full sinks 
and spent cans, we built temples together 
with glass nails.
We drank blessed rain. Tasted the salt 
of tired faces. We sharpened tongues 
on liquor and numbed our throats 
with the shouts of gratitude we found in song, 
and who here isn’t sad?
That our names, so many now,
will soon fall strangely from our lips.
And here, through any door, don’t eyes turn
toward us, aflame
with recognition? We will never be hungrier
nor fuller than this, 
and when the ones we have loved 
find homes in the cities we hear of,
who will be left to pull us from ourselves
into days beyond a day’s measure-
back to a place of easy faith, 
of idle communion—to the street where sunlight 
turned the rain into smoke on our skin.




Samuel Burt is a poet and artist from Iowa, currently pursuing his poetry MFA at Bowling Green State University. A 2022 winner of the AWP's Intro Journals Project, Sam's work has been featured in a number of online and print journals, including Indigo, Salt Hill, FEED, and The Journal.