Associate Editor Caitlin Doyle: Alexandra Teague’s “[It is undone business I speak of, this morning]” asks us to confront the all-too-narrow distance between safety and danger in our daily lives. In her examination of the “ordinary spells against gravity” that keep ruin at bay, Teague never lets us forget that annihilation is always just a “leg-length away.” As the poem’s speaker recalls a harrowing childhood incident, Teague makes us wince while simultaneously reminding us that the moments in which we feel our invincibility shatter may ultimately be the ones that most define us.

To hear Alexandra read her poem, click here:



[It is undone business I speak of, this morning]



After the corner where the white dog with the flat
shark head at the head-high fence, and the hill’s burst

of planter-box vines and trampolines, the water tower
holds its steel cloud of lake. What pumps must it use;

what ordinary spells against gravity. The father spreading
paper-doll-collapsing boxes of McDonald’s for his son

in its picnic-tabled shade, emptying them into the empty
green of summer day. What ordinary optimism: one-way

suck of straw between mouth and world; the tower’s
legs lifting always upward. What belief in my own legs

as unsurprisingly alive that keeps me running on, not
pooling on the lawn until my parents drive out of the past

to find me—roll down the station wagon’s windows
to let luck in; wasp on the dashboard; seat belts clanking.

What safety of that always-nylon belt, those seconds as
my father braked behind the flatbed braking at the light,

steel pipes shearing off it down our station wagon’s side,
chalkboard-metal screech of doors from hinges. What

fourth wall opening. The road where it had always been:
leg-length away. What belief that ever learns again to say

inside and outside will hold their place? Low chain link of yard
dog head. French fries spilling from their sunspot carton.

What valves that keep the water in the sky until it’s time
to drink it. What pipes arrowing. Oil, drainage, metal, car

tin-canning open; here-is-the-churching open like a child’s
hands. What ordinary child hasn’t played Here is the steeple;

open the door, turning the rafters inside out to praying
people. What kind of safety, breaking apart to make us?


Alexandra Teague is the author of Or What We’ll Call Desire (Persea, 2019), and two prior poetry books—The Wise and Foolish Builders and Mortal Geography—as well as co-editor of Bullets into Bells: Poets and Citizens Respond to Gun Violence. A professor at University of Idaho, she is currently on sabbatical in Wales.

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