Robert Blake Truscott
to a poet dying young

Ishmael was knocked cold
from the blow
of the doused Coleman lantern.

The ladder had been taken away,
and the one pentagonal window
was sealed with India Rubber.

Ishmael woke to the gas,
escaping faster than lungs could inspire.

If he lit the match before
the room filled up,
he had a chance.

The flame might melt
the India rubber to a soup,
better chowder than corpse
shrouded in eraser.

He had no time to lose.
With his one free hand,
he took out the matchbook
like a pen

(on the inside
it showed a place he could go
and get an education
if he could spell a four‑letter
word for “pyrotechnics”),

bent one double, and thought
how it was a kind of talent
to be a match‑writer,

pressed his thumbnail
hard on the sulfur tip
to run across
the glass‑particle edge and….