Linda Dove
featured maryland writers
Linda Dove holds a PhD in Renaissance literature and teaches college writing. She is also an award-winning poet of five books: In Defense of Objects (2009), O Dear Deer, (2011), This Too (2017), Fearn (2019), and Switchfish (2023). While in southern California, she served as the Altadena Poet Laureate from 2012-2014, as well as the founding editor of MORIA Literary Magazine. She relocated to her hometown of Columbia, Maryland, two years ago and recently received a merit-based grant for her poetry from the Howard County Arts Council. She teaches at Howard Community College.
Fire Follower
I think about your rage in the airport when I took you
from your first home. You were wearing red,
white, and blue like a little flag. How I didn’t know
you then, adopted Chinese daughter.
Your anger reversed the spindle prick, waking you
to a hundred years of fighting fire with fire,
embers airborne. Wildfire can put a forest to sleep,
trees not tall again till the next century.
Then the world restarts as fireweed, mallow, poppies—
hot pinks and oranges that remember what flame is.
You sparked. At first, pushbacks were small—
how you didn’t like your doll or refused
to wear the Halloween costume your father
bought. You requested witch but got something
more like princess with a pointy hat. So I dressed you
with what we had, as farmer—flannel, jeans, straw
derby. You shrugged. The holiday had betrayed you
or maybe we had. We hadn’t seen you well enough
to see that witch meant tough—some version of punk.
Leather. Chains. Boy. That was the magic you were after.
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