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TPCReview Issue 002

Danny Bellinger

Fire In the Bones

The emotional bruiser of an aunt I miss already
taught me there is no comfort in risk. Cremated after service, we stand around
confused about what to do next. No final parade floating 
her down the highway

no watchers waving on either side of the street like cars 
tailing left or right as she crosses through the dead sea to cemetery 
no gift to give the ground for her to be swallowed whole.

Oh, what a fire in the bones, a choice to be cremated this way and not
by a bomb while in a deep sleep. Half dead myself, I could go any day
but my mind keeps me playing in the yard with half dead arms and legs 

telling me I’m not the same, not even my mother glued to her wheelchair
like kudzu to pine, slowly taking what it wants from season to invisible season.
When did my son get so tall and my daughter learn to drive; when did they step out
of the elementary school line and my wife and I become alone 

again? It’s a strange aloneness we stubble around in like children stealing touches,
inquisitively studying our body parts that rise inside the skin 
of our clothes like something magic, a resurrection of everything 
one’s ever known to love.

Danny Bellinger is a poet, writer, and Assistant Professor at Georgia Highlands College in Atlanta, GA. He was a Summer Poetry Fellow at the Community of Writers in both 2021 and 2024, where he also received the C.D. Wright Memorial Scholarship. His most recent work has appeared in Community of Writers Poetry Review, Black Sunflowers Poetry, Obsidian, Callaloo, and others. His chapbook, More Beautiful Than the Dead, was recently published by Black Sunflower Poetry Press out of London.