Current
Issue
Fall 2026 / Volume 13.1
William Camponovo
—
Controlled Burn
Diet of twigs, litter
layer, an understory
decayed ponderosa,
diet of pine the swailing,
fire fed, it metabolizes.
Pine pyrescent,
it’s ready to mate. Hot
to trot, the seeds. Figuratively,
literally, unclear to me, this.
The heat exceeds
the grasp of the sunlight –
nightjar, evening,
silviculturist bleeds
from his ankle, glochid –
musk hog, skunk pig.
To know ripe chaparral
demands eyes, nose, palate,
patient fingernails.
A landscape starved,
then fattened.
All this aphrodisiacal flora.
Oh, to be clear:
topography obliterated,
topography, gone. Purged.
I recognize this feeling –
absence of one – the expunged –
controlled fires beget –
Parallel my heart
burrows into the warren
like a rabbit.
William Camponovo’s work has appeared in Iron Horse Literary Review, The Seattle Review, Los Angeles Review, and Best New Poets. Online, his scholarly work can be found at The Hopkins Review.
William has studied poetry at Johns Hopkins University, Antioch University – LA, the University of Washington, and the City University of New York (CUNY). At the Graduate Center of CUNY, his writing examined the life and work of Adrienne Rich. With Lost + Found and the CUNY Poetics Document Initiative, he has edited and published work by poets Gregory Corso and Jack Forbes.
A recipient of the Bechtel Prize from the Teachers and Writers Collaborative, William has previously taught with the Bard Prison Initiative campuses at the Brooklyn Public Library and the Bard Microcollege for Just Community Leadership in Harlem. Currently, he teaches with the City College of New York. He lives in Brooklyn.
