The Kiln

Assistant Editor Prince Bush: This poem has vivid defamiliarization, and certain objects one might take for granted—such as “urns” and an “oven”—are made suggestively human. The white space in the middle of this poem stimulates speculation, and the final two lines make a complex and provocative truth claim.

Listen to Quinn Franzen read the poem:

Note: The full text of the poem follows the image below.

The Kiln

Transcript

On a nearby sawhorse strange acolytes
gather: ceramic       tiger, smirking clay
volcano, a                           gossip of urns.
Like a sacked                    tomb the oven
yawns—                                   even girded
with steel                             it fails to keep
the dead in or                             living out.
Glaze spatters                              each wall
the wine-                                   green of an
aging bruise.                              Fire siloed
from the earth                         with cinder
blocks. It’s                                     summer:
a      chipmunk                           in the gap.
The crucible not the clay     is changed.
Not the clay but the hand that shapes it.