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By Quan Barry

I have come to realize the body is its own pyre, that degree
rises from within, the fatty acids a kind of kindling.
Like a scientist in a lab, this much I have established, blood jelled
like gasoline, the years spread before me like a map
pinned with targets, where I’m raging even now.
It works both ways. Clear the forests to see your enemies
and your enemies see you clearly. Like all effective incendiaries,
I won’t only bloom where I’m planted.
 


Quan Barry, "Napalm" from the poem sequence entitled "child of the enemy" from Asylum.  Copyright © 2001 by Quan Barry. All rights are controlled by the University of Pittsburgh Press, Pittsburgh, PA 15260. Used by permission of the University of Pittsburgh Press.

Source: Asylum (University of Pittsburgh Press, 2001)

Poet Bio

Quan Barry
Born in Saigon, Vietnamese poet and novelist Quan Barry was raised on the north shore of Boston. She earned a BA from the University of Virginia and an MFA from the University of Michigan. Barry is the author of the poetry collections Asylum (2001), Controvertibles (2004), Water Puppets (2011), and Loose Strife (2015). She also wrote the novel She Weeps Each Time You’re Born (2015). Her writing has appeared in the New Yorker, the Missouri Review, Ploughshares, the Kenyon Review, the Virginia Quarterly Review, and elsewhere. See More By This Poet
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