Al Maginnes's Writings
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Poem
May.15.2012
Boxcar Poetry Review
Boys in small towns love fire, and these boys know every town is small. Everywhere I lived, we performed the ritual of matches, coaxed budding flame with pine straw and twigs until branches as long as our arms, longer, became fire and its caustic aftermath.
Because boys will not
say what they love, they weave a language in the blue heart of...
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Poem
May.27.2009
published in Lake Effect Spring 09 and in GHOST ALPHABET
DinkytownFor Phil Terman
You could have been one of the few present that afternoondeep in some memory crafted to separate that hour from the blue fog of every other espresso-tarred houryou spent deep in the haze uttered from the poisonousblack cigarettes you loved then, huddled above the endless chess battleyou fought all that year with Carlos, the two of you...
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Dec.21.2008
Southern Review
These Accidents
We've taken a wrong turn somewhere and now we are two couples in one car, late to a Christmas party, navigating a neighborhood where lane blends into lane, where houses pose on well-scaped yards, placed precisely as bells of confectioner's sugar on a cake. One of us is reading the useless directions, another willing her cell phone to work while...
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Poem
Dec.21.2008
New Madrid
In one I was a dog, reason enoughto extend my hand now to dogs and stay as long as they require. Each lifeas a cat was short and throttledwith rage. Countless more went bynameless and wriggling, capable of sensation, but not language.In another I was the soldier bearing torches to burn a city. And onceI died in a city that burned, choked on the stink of my...
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About Al
I was born in Boston, Massachusetts and raised in a number of states, mostly in the southeast. I've worked as a mail clerk, a landscaper, an electrician, a hammock weaver, a carpenter's helper, a construction field engineer, and, since 1990, as a teacher. I'm...