Man Sets Himself on Fire on the Steps of the US Capitol
by Clara Trippe
in honor of Wynn Alan Bruce
Wynn, I’ve spent the morning imagining the particular folds
of a pug’s face, their labored breathing. And you of course:
face unburned in memory, before joining the ground
and the skies of your homeland Colorado, also burning.
Everything is happening out of season, even disaster.
Just now, a pug walked past and I could hear him wheeze,
not even a flicker of the wolfhounds his DNA once unspooled.
Dr. Frankenstein is alive and well all around us, I guess. My evidence:
The news said you killed yourself—which isn’t quite right.
Or it is, but it wasn’t suicide.
Not just your body bright against the marble,
but the bodies of the brush, clung to the mountainside,
the mountains themselves in past and future.
Not your own flesh. Our flesh. Fuel and Ash:
you will travel in the wind, bury in the ground and germinate,
green legs clinging in soil womb. Or you may ascend to level
of light, of shining, being shone upon, fueling
and being fueled by its heat. Don’t stop me.
I know you know, but I can feel it slipping away
even as I say it, become separate from me as I wash the dirt
from my hands. One of my houseplants is dying, its leaves becoming
damp and rotten. Beneath: a mushroom opening its cap.
A body doesn’t give up, it gives itself away, as a bodhisattva
roasted himself, was consumed. As another flung himself from a cliff,
was consumed. Each shift: a monk in prayer and then in flames.
The scorched world dimming, until those of us left behind
only have the quiet of soil, the womb that rises from grave.
Wynn, I’ve spent the morning imagining the particular folds
of a pug’s face, their labored breathing. And you of course:
face unburned in memory, before joining the ground
and the skies of your homeland Colorado, also burning.
Everything is happening out of season, even disaster.
Just now, a pug walked past and I could hear him wheeze,
not even a flicker of the wolfhounds his DNA once unspooled.
Dr. Frankenstein is alive and well all around us, I guess. My evidence:
The news said you killed yourself—which isn’t quite right.
Or it is, but it wasn’t suicide.
Not just your body bright against the marble,
but the bodies of the brush, clung to the mountainside,
the mountains themselves in past and future.
Not your own flesh. Our flesh. Fuel and Ash:
you will travel in the wind, bury in the ground and germinate,
green legs clinging in soil womb. Or you may ascend to level
of light, of shining, being shone upon, fueling
and being fueled by its heat. Don’t stop me.
I know you know, but I can feel it slipping away
even as I say it, become separate from me as I wash the dirt
from my hands. One of my houseplants is dying, its leaves becoming
damp and rotten. Beneath: a mushroom opening its cap.
A body doesn’t give up, it gives itself away, as a bodhisattva
roasted himself, was consumed. As another flung himself from a cliff,
was consumed. Each shift: a monk in prayer and then in flames.
The scorched world dimming, until those of us left behind
only have the quiet of soil, the womb that rises from grave.
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Clara Trippe is a Midwest poet who grew up on occupied Ojibwe land. She received a Bachelor of Arts from Grinnell College and an MFA in Poetry at University of Oregon. She is a lover of queer theory and fresh water. More of her work is featured in The Rumpus, Heavy Feather Review, The Normal School, Glass: A Journal of Poetry, and The Shallow Ends. You can find her on Instagram and Twitter at @mid_west_dad.
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