Aaron Fagan was born in Rochester, New York in 1973, grew up in the village of Victor in upstate New York, and was educated at Hampshire College and Syracuse University. In 1998 he went to Chicago and worked as an Assistant Editor for Poetry and as a Reference Assistant for the Newberry Library. Poems of his have appeared in The American Poetry Review, Another Chicago Magazine, Boulevard, The Brooklyn Review, Living Forge, Opium, Shenandoah, and The Yale Review. His first book, Garage, is just out from Salt Publishing. He lives in the Bronx.
The House that Buster Keaton Built
Looks just as thrown together as I am—on edge
And tired of windows framing days. Mullions like
Cross-hairs on a gun aimed at me. The flight of stairs
Lead up to a door that leads to another door that leads
Down to the underwater basement, where I, in a lead
MARK V diving suit, sit at a lop-sided desk composing
Poems—surrounded by the silence of their inspiration.
Upstairs, my wife pumps a loom—making both
A blanket for our son and air for me, striking a delicate
Balance between the practical and the absurd while I,
Stone-faced and a porkpie hat off to you, write—
An octopus as my inkwell, a swordfish as my might quill.
Lead up to a door that leads to another door that leads
Down to the underwater basement, where I, in a lead
MARK V diving suit, sit at a lop-sided desk composing
Poems—surrounded by the silence of their inspiration.
Upstairs, my wife pumps a loom—making both
A blanket for our son and air for me, striking a delicate
Balance between the practical and the absurd while I,
Stone-faced and a porkpie hat off to you, write—
An octopus as my inkwell, a swordfish as my might quill.
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