• Skip to primary navigation
  • Skip to main content
  • Skip to primary sidebar
  • Home
  • Reading
    • Blog
    • On Writing
    • Interviews
    • Famous Authors
    • Stories
    • Poetry
  • Writing
    • Writing Tips
    • Writing Inspiration
    • Playground
    • Writing Prompts
  • Publishing
    • Publishing Tips
    • Literary Magazines
    • Book Publishers
  • Promotions
    • Book Promotions
    • Promoting Tips
    • Classifieds
    • Newsletter
  • Submit

Every Day Poems

A Poem A Day

  • Poetry of the 1500s
  • Poetry of the1600s
  • Poetry of the 1700s
  • Poems for Kids
  • War Poems
  • Every Poem

Dynamite by Anders Carlson-Wee

February 19, 2017 by Every Writer

Dynamite

by Anders Carlson-Wee

My brother hits me hard with a stick
so I whip a choke-chain

across his face. We’re playing
a game called Dynamite

where everything you throw
is a stick of dynamite,

unless it’s pine. Pine sticks
are rifles and pinecones are grenades,

but everything else is dynamite.
I run down the driveway

and back behind the garage
where we keep the leopard frogs

in buckets of water
with logs and rock islands.

When he comes around the corner
the blood is pouring

out of his nose and down his neck
and he has a hammer in his hand.

I pick up his favorite frog
and say If you come any closer

I’ll squeeze. He tells me I won’t.
He starts coming closer.

I say a hammer isn’t dynamite.
He reminds me that everything is dynamite.

Originally appeared in Ninth Letter
###

Anders Carlson-Wee is a 2015 NEA Creative Writing Fellow and the author of Dynamite, winner of the 2015 Frost Place Chapbook Prize. His work has appeared in Ploughshares, New England Review, AGNI, Poetry Daily, The Iowa Review, The Missouri Review, The Southern Review, Best New Poets, The Best American Nonrequired Reading, and Narrative Magazine, which featured him on its 30 below 30 list of young writers to watch. Winner of Ninth Letter’s Poetry Award, Blue Mesa Review’s Poetry Prize, and New Delta Review’s Editors’ Choice Prize, he was runner-up for the 2016 Discovery/Boston Review Poetry Prize. With his brother Kai, he is coauthor of two chapbooks: Mercy Songs and Two-Headed Boy, winner of the 2016 Blair Prize. His work has been translated into Chinese. He lives in Minneapolis, where he serves as a McKnight Foundation Creative Writing Fellow.

Filed Under: poem

Primary Sidebar

AD




Search

Latest

Because We Steer by Dead Stars by Claire Scott

Claire Scott is an award winning poet who has received multiple Pushcart Prize nominations. Her work has been accepted by the Atlanta Review, Bellevue Literary Review, New Ohio Review, Enizagam and Healing Muse among others.

I’ve Set Out All of the Traps for Us by Kiara Nicole Letcher

I start to miss you right after you leave
and then at night I feel a deep ache
in that need spot.

The Shaman by Larry D. Thomas

Larry D. Thomas, a member of the Texas Institute of Letters, was the 2008 Texas Poet Laureate. He has published several award-winning and critically acclaimed collections of poetry

Copyright © 2023 · Metro Pro on Genesis Framework · WordPress · Log in