• Poetry
  • Fiction
  • Flash Fiction
  • Nonfiction
  • Book Reviews
  • Translations
  • About
  • Awards
  • Submissions
  • Buy LAR
  • Poetry
  • Fiction
  • Flash Fiction
  • Nonfiction
  • Book Reviews
  • Translations
  • About
  • Awards
  • Submissions
  • Buy LAR

Elegy with Arrows by William Fargason


In the near-dark of the suburban street lights 

coming on, my father sits hunched in his garage, 

refletching an arrow clamped on the workbench 

 

he built. The carbon-black shaft of the arrow 

is a letter he writes under the small desk light

dulled by cowled spider webs. His own father

 

has just died, he does not talk about this more

than letting me know. Classic rock plays 

on the silver radio in the corner. He is again lost 

 

in the dream a project allows him, he is

asleep standing up. I do not interrupt him,

but I watch when he spins the bar of the clamp vice 

 

to loosen the arrow, and as he holds, then removes 

the thing slowly, letting the light catch

the new glue he just piped on. He picks

 

up a bright orange nock between his fingers

like a communion wafer or an offering,

and readies it for the next arrow, then the next.

 

 


William Fargason is the author of Love Song to the Demon-Possessed Pigs of Gadara (University of Iowa Press, 2020), winner of the 2019 Iowa Poetry Prize and the 2020 Florida Book Award in Poetry (Gold Medal). His poetry has appeared in The Threepenny Review, Prairie Schooner, New England Review, Barrow Street, Indiana Review, The Cincinnati Review, Narrative, and elsewhere. He earned an MFA in poetry from the University of Maryland and a PhD in poetry from Florida State University. He is the poetry editor of Split Lip Magazine. He lives with himself in Sparks Glencoe, Maryland.


20 September 2021



Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Recent Posts

  • The Search for the Tao in Hip-Hop by Alejandro Nava
  • house(hold) by Lindsay Stewart Review by Lawrence Di Stefano
  • A Walk at Night by Luis Torres
  • Commonplace by Hugo García Manríquez Review by Brent Ameneyro
  • Poems by Simon Johannin Translated by Cory Stockwell

Recent Comments

  • Judith Fodor on Three Poems by David Keplinger
  • Marietta Brill on 2 Poems by Leah Umansky

Categories

  • Award Winners
  • Blooming Moons
  • Book Reviews
  • Fiction
  • Flash Fiction
  • Interviews
  • LAR Online
  • Nonfiction
  • Poetry
  • Translations
  • Uncategorized

Meta

  • Log in
  • Entries feed
  • Comments feed
  • WordPress.org

Recent Posts

  • The Search for the Tao in Hip-Hop by Alejandro Nava
  • house(hold) by Lindsay Stewart Review by Lawrence Di Stefano
  • A Walk at Night by Luis Torres
  • Commonplace by Hugo García Manríquez Review by Brent Ameneyro
  • Poems by Simon Johannin Translated by Cory Stockwell
© 2014 Los Angeles Review. All Rights Reserved. Design and Developed by NJSCreative Inspired by Dessign.net