BEGINNING & ENDING WITH FIRE

1

In my sleep I see
the young man’s body
burning like a star.

2

My father in Ohio
opened his thigh
with a chainsaw.
The cut was clean
but he’s sixty-six now—

his legs are thinner
like the higher branches
of the trees he’s felling.
Groundhogs, the bastards,
have weakened the roots.

3

I confuse the dark
of my Januaries.

4

A stranger in the park
jogged past me, yelled
It’s going to be okay!

5

In my sleep I see
the young man’s arms
through smoke
waving & waving goodbye—

*

Ashley Seitz Kramer has won numerous awards including the Ruth Stone Prize, the Schiff Prize, the Utah Writers’ Contest, and the Zone 3 Press First Book Award in Poetry for her book, Museum of Distance (2015). Her work is widely published in such places as Cimarron Review, The Burnside Review, Anti-, Parcel, Brevity, Western Humanities Review, Colorado Review, Quarterly West, The Southeast Review, The Cincinnati Review, and Hunger Mountain. She holds an MFA in Poetry from Vermont College and a PhD from the University of Utah. She lives in Salt Lake City.