Geoffrey Nilson
Burning Down The House
Gregory Crewdson, Twilight: Plate 11,
2002, digital print of 8×10 glass negative
he walks two three times
around the gas can slouched
on his heels the building
crackling his two
teenage daughters stuck
in a game of risk on the hood
of the family station wagon
‘you might not know it yet
but the balkans are mine’ she
said the one bent over
the polished chrome grill
the back of the wagon stuffed
with board games bath towels
jewelry winter boots aromatics
trinkets first editions large
prints ‘when are we outta here?
i’m about to be invaded’ she
asked the one laid back
across the windshield
he follows his rut like a track
like a car pulled by a chain to scrap
he smells his fingers
no lingering seagram’s or
bombay sapphire only the crisp
tart of gasoline & sulfur
combustion rough heel
standing callus standing
orders to rest the time off
nothing but time off now
in the shadow of closed fences
‘you know we have to watch
burn it down before someone gets to it’
soot under nails a book of matches
strip wood kindling molded
smoke between light & dark
deciduous leaves the leaving
he circles the gasoline head up
there was nowhere else to go &
they’d be coming soon
Geoffrey Nilson is a writer and musician from New Westminster, BC. His poetry has appeared in publications across Canada including PRISM international, subTerrain, The Rusty Toque, and rip/torn. In 2012, he was a finalist for The Malahat Review Far Horizons Award for Poetry. In the fall of 2014 he is attending The Banff Centre’s Wired Writing Studio and he studies Creative Writing at Kwantlen Polytechnic University where he is the Web Editor for Pulp, a literary and visual arts magazine of student work.