National Poetry Month 2018: Jesse Ball

Image Taken from The School of the Art Institute of Chicago

With this week's poet, we jump ahead a couple hundred years and change to a modern writer, Jesse Ball. I first read Ball's The Village on Horseback when trying to figure out how to sequence my own multi-genre work, along with Claudia Rankine's Citizen, and those two books have always had a soft spot in my heart since. My brother died on Friday the 13th, a long time ago, so when it rolls around I always have brothers on the mind.

"Inside the Stove"

Inside the stove, he found 
a passageway, leading to a set of stairs.
This caused him a great deal of worry
as well as elation and gladness of living.
He did not, however, venture
into the oven, but sent his little brother in
in his stead. This seemed at first 
a good idea, but when the brother
had been gone three days, he began 
to second-guess the wisdom
of his rash choice. He’d go in after him,
he decided. But the passage
had shrunk by then, and no normal-sized
person could fit through. Yes, that’s it,
I sent him in because, from a purely physical
standpoint, I myself could never have gone.
And besides, he mumbled to himself,
it’s probably nice in there.