By Marcia LeBeau

I can’t promise you I know how to sit across from a man,
as he lights his campfire heart, without letting it
warm me. And I won’t pour water over it before it glows
down to embers in the lambent hours of the morning.
As shadow flames sashay across my face, I might throw in
the branches I’ve gathered from my forest. Make it blaze.

Marcia LeBeau’s poems have been published in Rattle, Painted Bride Quarterly,
Hiram Poetry Review, SLANT, and O, The Oprah Magazine. Her chapbook,
The Book of Bob, was shortlisted for the 2019 Wallace Award. LeBeau, who
holds an MFA from the Vermont College of Fine Arts, is an artist-in-residence
in the schools and plays viola in her local symphony. She is the founder of The
Write Space, a collaboration space for creative writer, in Orange, New Jersey.