First, the Match


Taken from inside the tree,
I was sheared away from the rest
who, yes, were also broken into bits.

I was cut clean then, and made
to pay attention to geometry, and answer
the blade’s straight lines.

They fitted me with a neat, red head
and tapped a cap on that.

The box was there to receive me;
I aligned with the other captives
and saw no light until one was selected
who did not return. 

Dead months of silence until again,
​another, and then me— 
dragged out along the pavement
and then up to light. 


KC Trommer, author of The Hasp Tongue (dancing girl press, 2014), is a graduate of the MFA program at University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. She has won an Academy of American Poets Prize, and her poem, "Fear Not, Mary," won the 2015 Fugue Poetry Prize and was nominated for a Pushcart Prize.