Sean McDowell Biography

A boy a girl a garden:
it always begins something like this.
You awaken to find rock still pliant
from the Creator's hand, the stars burning free in the twilight
...

We put our weapons in the trunk––
a wood staff, two metal bats, & a BB-gun
shaped like a Luger––
& set out for Lincoln Park in Trevor's '94 Firebird.
...

You had crouched to trace out a footprint in compact ice
with fingertips too frozen to feel,
glancing up at me and saying confidently,
'Two of them, probably infantry, traveling light, heading east
...

I set the brightness to one bar
and see in the face that slides onto the paper tray
the moment before Hiroshima
flickered––the eyes narrowing, diminishing to pupils
...

i am one of the few who was left behind
to lay his head in these forsaken lands. one of the few
who still awakens each day
to watch the half-completed structure
...