SOUTHERN HUMANITIES REVIEW
  • HOME
    • EVENTS
    • Pushcart Prize Nominees
    • RESULTS: Auburn Witness Poetry Prize Honoring Jake Adam York 2022
    • RESULTS: Editors Chapbook Prize for Fiction 2021
  • CURRENT ISSUE
    • ONLINE FEATURES
    • REVIEWS
    • STORE
  • ARCHIVES
    • The 1960s
    • The 2010s
    • The 2020s
  • SUBMISSIONS
    • Submit
    • Auburn Witness Poetry Prize
  • ABOUT
  • HOME
    • EVENTS
    • Pushcart Prize Nominees
    • RESULTS: Auburn Witness Poetry Prize Honoring Jake Adam York 2022
    • RESULTS: Editors Chapbook Prize for Fiction 2021
  • CURRENT ISSUE
    • ONLINE FEATURES
    • REVIEWS
    • STORE
  • ARCHIVES
    • The 1960s
    • The 2010s
    • The 2020s
  • SUBMISSIONS
    • Submit
    • Auburn Witness Poetry Prize
  • ABOUT
Search by typing & pressing enter

YOUR CART

POETRY

When I Was Fire

By Sam Ross     VOLUME 51.1


Vertical Divider

READ BY CARA DEES




I never mourned. I had to begin
and begin again, with hope,

before I could look back
at what I had done

and to whom. When I was fire
I felt my bull beneath me

in the chute. The sky was a wall
of stuck-shut windows.

I hadn’t thought in this century
it was possible to smell God—

but something in the soil
the very last time. It was there

when I let the bull bolt
from under, circle, and face me.

It was there where I bowed to him
burning—perfume.











SAM ROSS’s poems have appeared in Tin House, New Republic, Gulf Coast, and other journals. He is a 2016-2017 Writing Fellow at the Fine Arts Works Center in Provincetown, Massachusetts.


Picture

VOLUME 51.1


SOLD OUT IN PRINT
BUY DIGITAL
MORE FROM THIS ISSUE

CURRENT ISSUE
SUBMIT
EVENTS
ARCHIVES
STORE

Vertical Divider

CONTACT
SOUTHERN HUMANITIES REVIEW
9088 HALEY CENTER
AUBURN UNIVERSITY
AUBURN, AL 36849

shr@auburn.edu
334.844.9088

Vertical Divider
Official trademark of Auburn University

DEPARTMENT OF ENGLISH
COLLEGE OF LIBERAL ARTS