The Arsonist's Daughter, by Andrew K. Peterson

This poem was inspired by a scene from Wonder Boys. Dir. Curtis Hanson. Paramount Pictures, 2000; and a scene from Clue. Dir. Jonathan Lynn. Paramount Pictures, 1985. (Screenshots from film scenes).

Arsonist’s Daughter

A bald cypress, the lone witness: “If it weren’t for Madeline, grown
and gone, snorting moonlight’s paragon grooves, mending

Dresses hemmed of midnight suns some Oslo summer,
we wouldn’t have much to argue in favour,” sips rainwater in windturn.   

“She is not the daughter, it continues,” dipping its roots. “The father
was a timid dolt, graceless and harmless. She is not the daughter;

She is not sad laughter. Sparse remnants, dune memory. Resonance
of touch.” The neighborhood aches off some mighty fine dead.

“She is flames, flames on the side of my face… heaving, breathless…
heaving breaths. She is the arsonist.” Past ash’s limit, breaks

From the honeybunch tangerine trench to this taut limit limb,
past as far as she can go, she does go. Heaving, breathless.

Is limitless and conjuring.

​Andrew K. Peterson

Andrew K. Peterson is the author of three poetry books, most recently Anonymous Bouquet (Spuyten Duyvil Press, 2015). His 2017 chapbook The Big Game is Every Night was sent to the White House alongside other chapbooks from Moria Books’ Locofo Chaps series as collective protest. Another chapbook, bonjour meriwether and the rabid maps (Fact-Simile, 2011) was exhibited as part of an installation of poets’ maps at the University of Arizona’s Poetry Center. He is a co-founder and editor of Summer Stock lit journal, and lives in Boston.