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Column 271

Fire Victim

Intro by Ted Kooser
05.30.2010

It’s not uncom­mon for peo­ple to turn their eyes away from those who bear the scars of mis­for­tune. Here’s a poem about that by Ned Bal­bo, who lives and teach­es in Maryland.

Fire Victim

Once, boarding the train to New York City,
The aisle crowded and all seats filled, I glimpsed
An open space—more pushing, stuck in place—
And then saw why: a man, face peeled away,
Sewn back in haste, skin grafts that smeared like wax
Spattered and frozen, one eye flesh-filled, smooth,
One cold eye toward the window. Cramped, shoved hard,
I, too, passed up the seat, the place, and fought on
Through to the next car, and the next, but now
I wonder why the fire that could have killed him
Spared him, burns scarred over; if a life
Is what he calls this space through which he moves,
Dark space we dared not enter, and what fire
Burns in him when he sees us move away.

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Disclaimer

We do not accept unsolicited submissions

We do not accept unsolicited submissions. American Life in Poetry is made possible by The Poetry Foundation (www.poetryfoundation.org), publisher of Poetry magazine. It is also supported by the Department of English at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. Copyright © 2005 by Ned Balbo. Reprinted from Lives of the Sleepers (2005), University of Notre Dame Press, by permission of Ned Balbo and the publisher. Introduction copyright © 2024 by The Poetry Foundation.

Column 270