United States, (1972-2012)
Elegy for Little Girls
Sloss Furnaces, Birmingham, September 16th 1963
- Puncture the mud, the iron pours out
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- tongue of fire, not a word
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- stays still but breaks along the channels
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- pressed in the cast floor’s sand.
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- Now it’s pigs suckling at the sow’s
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- iron teats, so many children blind
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- to the air and world that harden them.
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- A gift. Dark come on. When
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- the slag-man pulls the plug, fire
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- explodes, its violent, molten light
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- bathes the irons, a glow on their spines
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- like stained glass or twilight fades
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- on headstones’ crests, row on row on row.
About the Poet:
Jake Adam York, United States, (1972-2012), was a poet, editor and educator. He attended Auburn University, where he a BA in English and received his MFA and PhD in creative writing and English literature from Cornell University. York was an associate professor at the University of Colorado Denver and Health Sciences Center.
He published three books of poetry before his death: Murder Ballads, which won the 2005 Elixir Prize in Poetry; A Murmuration of Starlings; and Persons Unknown. A fourth book, Abide, was released posthumously, in 2014.
At the University of Colorado he was an editor for Copper Nickel, a nationally recognized student literary journal which he had helped found. York served as a founding editor for storysouth.com and as a contributing editor for Shenandoah magazine. He also founded the online journal Thicket, which focused on Alabama literature. [DES-07/22]