BURN
When an arsonist
haunted our street
my lip trembled
with helplessness.
The first fire, a rosemary bush
outside the house
of an outspoken neighbor
big white beard and pot-bellied,
picture a grizzled Santa Claus.
The first time we spoke
he told me about
the ex-son-in-law he almost murdered,
beating him
and driving his car until the tire
was an inch from his head,
before his daughter talked him down.
He didn’t tell this story by way of threat
but as a lesson about loyalty.
He, the good father,
me, who would understand
if I had a daughter.
My son, not yet three,
recognized this change in me
after the second fire.
He started crying when I stared off,
mid-play,
envisioning
how close the sage bush was
to the tree
that’s branches scraped the side of our house.
The third fire, a sage bush.
The homeowner said it must’ve been
the American flag he flew.
That offends some people, you know.
The flag didn’t catch fire, only the bush
before a neighbor spotted it
I didn’t sleep.
Like those newborn days
when my son cried all the time.
Or when he didn’t cry and
I woke in a terror, and fled crib-side
to put a hand to his chest.
I felt the rise and fall
to know he was breathing.
I didn’t sleep.
I peered through windows.
Because I heard noises
or because I didn’t.
The fourth fire caught a series of bushes
side-by-side
two doors down.
Flashing red and white lit
our bedroom wall,
woke my son to peer through blinds, too.
So I walked the street,
silent and still,
kitchen fire extinguisher in hand.
Equal parts to put out any blaze I came upon
and to demonstrate
to anyone watching through windows
I was not the arsonist.
And—
I don’t expect I’ll have a daughter,
but I understand.
In the half-baked fantasy
of catching a kid playing
with a lighter fluid and matches
at another shrubbery.
I imagine spraying ammonium phosphate to blind him
bludgeoning him
with the aluminum outside
until the red paint chips
into the arsonist’s blood.
I don’t have a daughter,
but I understand
what it is to burn.
THE SKY IS DARK
I had visions of fireworks,
the romance of thigh on thigh,
sweet skin sticky with July humidity.
Seated in the back of a pickup truck
staring at a sky
ablaze,
then dark again.
Close my eyes. It’s darker
and I might see anything.
But now we play a game
of fireworks or gunshots,
though neither of us know the
rhythm, echo, or timbre to listen for
quite right.
But we are
intertwined at least.
Turn the television louder,
watch its light flicker
on her face
as her breath settles
as my eyelids grow heavy again.
No further explosions,
no sirens.
Good.
But through the smudged window
the sky is dark
and anything might happen.
POSES
Porn performers learn
never to forget
the camera.
Mindful of light and shadows
And that intimacies like hair
falling to the wrong side
can obscure
their expression.
And I think back to sitting on the floor
college days
turning into the lens
with an idiot grin, double thumbs up,
subtle flex of my biceps.
Stacy the photographer’s sigh.
I forgot you always pose for pictures.
I don’t know if she took the photo
I don’t think I’ve ever seen it.
I want to hold you
the way a photograph
holds a moment
candidly.
Michael Chin was born and raised in Utica, New York and currently lives in Las Vegas with his wife and son. He is the author of three full-length short story collections and his debut novel, My Grandfather’s an Immigrant and So is Yours came out from Cowboy Jamboree Press in 2021. Chin won the 2017-2018 Jean Leiby Chapbook Award from The Florida Review and Bayou Magazine’s 2014 James Knudsen Prize for Fiction. Find him online atmiketchin.com and follow him on Twitter @miketchin.
RESURRECTION mag 