Firebug
by Kathleen Hellen
Neon winked The jukebox accused you
shouldn’t have done it
My throat a smokestack
sprouting fever from my head
The cops asked That one, there
That pocket full of posies
The orange pop I had been sipping
slipped A stickiness that
opened
into fists into haloes from a
host of gnats opened
into lavenders of air as thick as ash
The third floor of the building like a burned-out match
If you keep this up
Kathleen Hellen is a poet and the author of Umberto’s Night (Washington Writers Publishing House, 2012) and The Girl Who Loved Mothra (Finishing Line Press, 2010). Her poems are widely published and have appeared in American Letters & Commentary; Barrow Street; Cimarron Review; Nimrod; Poetry Northwest; Prairie Schooner; Stand; Sycamore Review; Witness; among others; and were featured on WYPR’s The Signal. A Pushcart nominee, she is senior poetry editor for the Baltimore Review.
As I formatted this piece for its online publication, I became aware of its spaces. How did you decide upon this layout for “Firebug”? I like the “unstruck chord” wherein the mind moves between sound and silence. In “Firebug” these “chords” are intended to assist in the compression of the monologue. Narrative in the poem advances using the medial caesura. The “silent pause,” the natural break between the independent clauses of each line, replaces the expectation of end punctuation in the middle of the lines. In this way, space is configured to provoke dramatic tension. The device also functions ironically here to suggest the firebug is lurching toward potentialities, toward consciousness, a dynamic better understood perhaps by the reader than the narrator of the poem and given awareness in the lines: “you shouldn’t have done it” and “If you keep this up.” The terminal caesuras lock the stanzas into movements. As in musical notation, they require a “hold,” where a breath is taken. An opening for awakening. A little opera, if you will, assisted with assonance.
Check out the write-up of the journal in The Writer.
Matter Press recently released titles from Meg Boscov, Abby Frucht, Robert McBrearty, Tori Bond, Kathy Fish, and Christopher Allen. Click here.
Matter Press is now offering private flash fiction workshops and critiques of flash fiction collections here.
Submissions
Poetry, creative nonfiction, and fiction/prose poetry submissions are now closed. The reading period for standard submissions opens again September 15, 2025. Submit here.
Upcoming
05/04 • Leath Tonino
05/11 • Chris Pellizzari
05/18 • Chris Clemens
05/25 • Clayton Eccard
06/01 • TBD
06/08 • TBD
06/15 • TBD
06/22 • TBD
06/29 • TBD
07/06 • TBD
07/13 • TBD
07/20 • TBD
07/27 • TBD
08/03 • TBD
08/10 • TBD
08/17 • TBD
08/24 • TBD
08/31 • TBD
09/07 • TBD
09/14 • TBD
09/21 • TBD