Slaughterhouse Fire

By R. E. Zuckerman

I have gone on lending     in the ashes     the
cleaving of my body &      a distillation 
of old desires       disembodied     in mausoleum &
quaker stones

I draw in dyads     a harkening to borrowed
flesh & the peculiar sadness of house fire      it
is       a kindness with which I was once 
unfamiliar      to love in stasis the butchery 
& its burning  

I pull great blackened timber wreckage & wrought
iron      a sloppy dismantling     but the embers
clear my sodalite body from its heavy quiet

I am free      eventually      this forever &
the ruins       the homeland slaughter impresses
of long blaze & I choose this over marrow
but it pulls at me

I find a great softening of my brutality     beyond
flame      but accidental parts long for the old
warmth of it       so it goes

R. E. Zuckerman is a poet, literature enthusiast, and native New Yorker. She has attended programs at Interlochen Center for the Arts, was a three time finalist for Collage, and was the recipient of the Maddy Summer Artist Award. Zuckerman has had work published by Interlochen, Girls Write Now, Scholastic, and others. She writes primarily in the strange and murky crossroads between poetry and narrative nonfiction, and is an undefined-genre apologist. Her main sources of inspiration are the weird messages her tarot decks have given her, Hozier-induced out of body experiences, and the unstoppable marching of time. When she isn’t writing, Zuckerman is likely at The Strand making poor financial decisions.