Brendan Constantine

Poetry

Brendan Constantine is a poet based in Los Angeles. His work has appeared in many standards, including Poetry, The Nation, Best American Poetry, and Poem A Day. He currently teaches at The Windward School and, for the last six years, has been developing workshops for writers living with Aphasia and Traumatic Brain Injuries (TBI).

 

Oxygen

When the hills catch fire, the crews have no choice but to attack from below. You don’t want to be higher, they say, that’s how you feed yourself to it. Even so, the fire can still fight back, loosening the ground around trees and boulders, so they come crashing down. The fighters learn this in fire school. Of course, it’s harder at night; they can only listen for whatever the fire may drop. So, they go slow and call out to each other, Rock, Tree, Animal. And since it’s always night somewhere, always out of control, one can imagine them right now, walking up the dark like gods or children, naming the world as it comes for them.

“ The poem was inspired in part by the events of the Cranston Fire, a major brushfire that affected the territories of Mountain Center and Idyllwild, California, in the summer of 2018. I was teaching poetry to children at a local arts academy and had to evacuate with them in the middle of a class. It was one of a handful of moments, when my duties have shifted from teacher to parent, when my only role is to demonstrate calm. I remember encouraging my students to compose verses aloud as we fled in the vans. They were soon laughing and totally engaged in writing epic poems. By the time we reached safety, they were as bored as gods. ”

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