Stacie Cassarino
Fireflies in Vermont
There we are at twilight
with the lurch of a wild animal
pacing under the thicket of our yard
for the first glimmer. I am not sure
how long I can carry her on my shoulders, soft-
bodied pulsing wonder,
but I don’t remember
how to put her down. It is hard
to breathe in this air, stagnant and
sweltering, hushed — some things
I simply can’t explain. If you want
to catch one,
you have to act like one. In-
destructible, vigilant, for-
giving of this momentary
radiance, a code
of too much wanting. Let me remind
you what I am here for. My breasts
are still sticky with milk, the babies
are finally asleep. Every-
thing that must be cared for
is in reach. If I was never one
for prayer,
why do I want to lower us to the earth
for a closer look? The head
is the sensory unit of the body.
The body is a lantern, fright-
fully exquisite. There was a girl
who took it apart, wing
by tender wing, and I was her
accomplice. We wore it well,
our fingers banded with shiny
stolen promises. It was magical.
Then we faded out.
How could I not have seen
our mistake in believing
the splendor could be ours?
How could I have wanted it
any other way?
Things were dying
while we were becoming alive.
Stacie Cassarino reads “Fireflies in Vermont”
Stacie Cassarino’s most recent collection, Each Luminous Thing, won the Lexi Rudnitsky Editor’s Choice Award and was published by Persea Books in 2023. She is the author of Zero at the Bone (2009), which received a Lambda Literary Award and the Audre Lorde Award, and a critical work, Culinary Poetics and Edible Images in Twentieth-Century American Literature (2018). She is a recipient of the 92Y “Discovery”/The Nation prize. Her poems have appeared in Poetry Northwest, Kenyon Review, Agni, Gulf Coast, The New Republic, and elsewhere. She lives in Vermont with her three daughters and teaches at Middlebury College.