The First Real Line
Each poem an opening,
an image held and praised:
your son at play in rain,
wet yet unaware that time
asks in. Each poem opens
overwrought, so often,
your broken runner’s stride
never warm and gliding.
Await the first real line.
You will know it,
you, looking over
a draft, will realize
the sacred has come
calling, you who’d
rather muscle your way in.
Give yourself
to the language that knocks,
follow it to the next door.
Aaron Brown is the author most recently of the poetry collection Call Me Exile (Stephen F. Austin State University Press, 2022) and memoir Less Than What You Once Were (Unsolicited Press, 2022). His debut poetry collection, Acacia Road, won the 2016 Gerald Cable Book Award and was published by Silverfish Review Press. Brown grew up in Chad and now lives in Texas, where he is an associate professor of English and directs the writing center at LeTourneau University. He holds an MFA from the University of Maryland.
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