Danielle Mckinney, Mercy (detail), featured in AGNI 103
Slow Burn
She writes him after this lifetime of silence.
There’s a tumor. They tell me it’s final.
She adds, My father’s farm burned down—
oh no no no.
First love meant hot vinyl
all through one summer. They crooned
along with that Platters tune
they treasured, “Smoke Gets In Your Eyes.”
Long drought, but they felt exalted by sighs:
for children like them hot love meant salvation—
but no. Oh no.
There’s a beech tree, or was:
are they still there, his incisions
in its trunk? Their crude initials . . .
Her treatment failed, having charred the innards.
How quaint, her diction. Fat clouds gathered,
he vaguely recalls—as they lay in thrall
to their radio—
over thirsty acres.
Rain boded but never fell.
She wants to catch up, that’s all.
Later she’d have a son and daughter,
who in mind dashed through some suburb’s sprinklers.
They must look like each other, would not be taken
for his children. No.
He imagines specters:
gap-beaked turkeys shaking
dry wattles, mute geese scolding,
and her late old man’s late cows and heifers
inaudibly bawling in stalls of cinder.
Absence, silence. After some brief season—
what can he do?—
her disaster will kill her.
Both adults, the children.
Perhaps that’s consolation.
He and she scarcely noticed dead leaves
and corn in the fields, wizened at seed.
Sydney Lea
Sydney Lea is the author of sixteen poetry collections, including What Shines (Four Way Books, 2023) and Pursuit of the Wound (University of Illinois Press, 2000), a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize; two novels, most recently Now Look (Down East Books, 2024); seven volumes of personal essays, most recently Such Dancing as We Can (The Humble Essayist Press, 2024); and a hybrid mock-epic for kids, with former Vermont Cartoonist Laureate James Kochalka. His new and selected poems, Dancing in the Dark, is due out from Four Way in 2027. Lea founded New England Review, served as Vermont Poet Laureate from 2011 to 2015, and has received his state’s highest artistic distinction, the Governor’s Award for Excellence in the Arts. (updated 4/2026)