Here at Black Lawrence Press we are celebrating National Poetry Month with a poem a day, featuring a total of 30 authors from our list. Today’s featured poet is Brandi George, author of Gog, which is forthcoming in 2015.
Homunculus
I couldn’t stand silent while my father cocked
his rifle at each thing weak
enough for him to own. I was a boy who turned
into a girl who was called a liar by everyone
I loved. My spirit in that angular, wiry form
was red and winged like a dog’s fang. A sparrow,
cardinal and starling lined up on the windowsill
and pecked the glass together: snare, timpani,
bass. I’ve become the wolf, his bastard son who dove
off a cliff into shallow water. O tiny changeling embryo,
self-sculpting clay, you’re a one-eyed thrush
in a bolt-gashed tree, a dreamonym for dust.
Brandi George grew up in rural Michigan. Her first collection of poetry, Gog, is forthcoming from Black Lawrence Press in 2015. Poems from this manuscript have appeared in such journals as Gulf Coast, Prairie Schooner, Best New Poets 2010, Ninth Letter, and The Iowa Review. She currently resides in Tallahassee, where she is a PhD candidate at Florida State University, Assistant to the Director of Creative Writing, and editor of the Southeast Review.