William Fargason

Temper Sonnet

After dinner or before dinner or after school,
I was expected to hold the ember my father
kept under his tongue. It was as hot as
a coal turned white. In my bedroom alone,

I played my boombox as loud as I could,
the soundwaves clipping. I spread the liner notes
across the carpet and read the lyrics like scripture,
my first poetry. I was too young to know that,

from a distance, a cooled ember can look
the same as hot one. I was too close
to the flames to see what they were burning.
Outside my door, my father. Outside my door,

a thousand red doves. But for a moment,
for a minute, that cool water, a song.

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William Fargason is the author of Velvet (Northwestern University Press, 2024) and Love Song to the Demon-Possessed Pigs of Gadara (University of Iowa Press, 2020). His poetry has appeared in Ploughshares, Threepenny Review, New England Review, Prairie Schooner, Poetry Northwest, Narrative and elsewhere. He has an MFA in poetry from the University of Maryland and a PhD in poetry from Florida State University. He lives with himself in College Park, Maryland.