Lynn McGee
Crush, 10
A little girl stabs a giant in the eye and he drops
to his knees, with her still in his fist. The dragons
that should have saved her snap leathery wings
and seem lost, but are looking for their brother,
who’s been gutted and used as the Night King’s
hand puppet. It’s episode three, final season,
Game of Thrones, and I’m rigid with the shock
of these images when I start a Skype with you,
who would not admit to being scared, I’m guessing,
or who would, in fact, not be scared, or who would,
when inhaled down that tunnel toward fear, take
action to deflect it, such as push-ups in the office
with the door locked, carpet close to your face,
shoulders clenched and forearms burning,
breath deep.
Lynn McGee is the author of Tracks (Broadstone Books, 2019) and Sober Cooking (Spuyten Duyvil Press, 2016), as well as two award-winning poetry chapbooks, Heirloom Bulldog (Bright Hill Press, 2015) and Bonanza (Slapering Hol Press, 1996). Here poems have appeared in the American Poetry Review, Southern Poetry Review, Ontario Review, Phoebe, Painted Bride Quarterly, Sun Magazine, and The New Guard, among other journals, as well as in the anthology Stonewall’s Legacy (Local Gems Press, 2019), edited by With José Pelauz, McGee wrote the children’s book Starting Over in Sunset Park (Tilbury House Publishers, 2020). She serves on the advisory board of the Hudson Valley Writers Center and co-curates the Lunar Walk Poetry Series with Gerry LaFemina and Madeleine Barnes. Online at lynnmcgee.com.
SUBMIT to What Rough Beast via our SUBMITTABLE site.
If you enjoyed today’s poem and you value What Rough Beast, consider making a donation to Indolent Books, a nonprofit poetry press.