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In the fifteen second span it took
to stretch two hundred feet of hose
down the berth of a burning bungalow, 

accompanied the livelong way
by a small boy skipping with his mutt
and cheerfully ignoring 

my profanity-laced imploring
to go play elsewhere faraway
like Norway or the ocean floor, 

I might just as well have stood there
sermonizing on about the supple grace
of origami swans 

for what little good my words did
to sway that kid and his ragamuffin pal
from the closest they’d yet come 

to the miraculous and terrible.
They were wholly satisfied to stand
not six feet back in mortal danger 

and watch me kick the back door open,
tongues of fire roiling
off the windows and the eaves. 

And had you met their eyes just then,
you would have seen them brimming
with the iconic stuff 

of epic poems and comic books,
nothing like the cruel misshapen thing
they loathed forevermore 

when I grabbed them by the scruffs
and flung them over a fence
with a gruff, Get lost! 

some bridge troll sent to wreck the lives
of dogs and children, some ogre
best imprisoned at the center of the earth.

 
Tim Krcmarik

Tim Krcmarik is a firefighter for the city of Austin, TX where he lives with his wife and son. His first book, The False Lark, was published by Diabolical Genius Press in 2013 and a pamphlet, The Heights, appeared in 2008 as part of the Lost Horse Press New Poets/ Short Books series. He is a recipient of the Paul Engle Fellowship from the University of Iowa and a graduate of the Iowa Writers’ Workshop.

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