Small God
George David Clark
| poetry
Small enough to crawl
in through the pet door
to my mind when I’m
all locked, so small
You nest a migraine
in my pillow, gall
my hallways like a noisy
clock, or, better,
You’re a doll and I’m the child
who would forget her
in a closet
though she coo and call,
left on, her voice box
stalling till the drawl
dissolves to empty howl,
a silent letter.
Except tonight Your volume
swells, gets stronger,
prouder, as the house
around You’s hushed—
alarms always seem loudest
when they’re wrong.
I damn the broke detector
wailing on,
but then there’s smoke.
Constricting rooms combust,
and You’re too big
to hide here any longer.
George David Clark’s first book, Reveille (Arkansas, 2015), won the Miller Williams Prize and his more recent work can be found in AGNI, The Cincinnati Review, The Gettysburg Review, Image, The New Criterion, The Southern Review, and elsewhere. He edits the journal 32 Poems.