Let My Footstep Strike the Ground Like a Spear
Let my footstep strike the ground like a spear.
Hear me bound through the groves of Sicily,
Drawing power from an Earth soaked in fear.
With father, I run from thicket to clear,
Mt Etna rising to the west of me.
Let my footstep strike the ground like a spear.
A man who bests me for year after year,
Stronger and taller than I’ll ever be,
Drawing power from an Earth soaked in fear.
While running in stride, these terrors appear,
How to match the man’s masculinity.
Let my footstep strike the ground like a spear.
Yet, he talks of his troubles drawing near,
The sun setting on a man such as he,
Drawing power from an Earth soaked in fear.
I, trying to match the man I revere.
He, tasting the slow loss of legacy.
Let my footstep strike the ground like a spear,
Drawing power from an Earth soaked in fear.
Nathan Dennis is a playwright and poet of Floridian extraction. He is the Vintner-in-Chief of Wine Cellar Press, a poetry press dedicated to free and formal verse in equal measure. He is a graduate of NYU Tisch Department of Dramatic Writing. His work has appeared in Anti-Heroin Chic, The Cabinet of Heed, Neologism Review, Crepe & Penn, Rat’s Ass Review, and UnscoopedBagel. His most recent play, Circle of Shit, was produced at Dixon Place in March, 2019.
