Todd Dillard

by Todd Dillard

Walking home from school I heard a kitten crying in a tree,
its body braced against a switch-thin limb.
I climbed up and took off my shirt.
I had this idea I could make a net out of it,

cast it over the kitten and drag it to safety–
but as I inched across the branch I slipped
and the shirt drifted to the grass below.
I kicked off my shoes and slid out of my jeans.

I thought maybe, if I laid them across the limb,
the kitten would crawl onto a leg and I
could tug it towards me on a denim sleigh.
But the kitten leapt, raked my stomach,

and lunged down the trunk. I grabbed the branch and
let go of my pants, which crumpled beside my shirt.
That’s when I heard girls on the sidewalk
talking. Something about Ms. Nevasham’s homework.

I had barely hid against the trunk when
Penelope from my class saw my clothes and screamed.
“The Rapture! Someone’s been yanked to heaven!”
The girls argued. How could it be the Rapture

if they were still here? How could someone
with a mustard-stained t-shirt go before them?
It was one of those moments when the world turns
away, no cars hushing down side streets,

no airplanes puncturing clouds, all the dogs busy
eating, all the wolves silently mourning the new moon.
“Why are we so alone?” Penelope asked
in a voice like a train pulling away.

“Hi sorry,” I called from behind the tree.
“I’m an angel. The Rapture hasn’t happened yet.
This was just a practice run. We wanted to
make sure everything is working as intended.”

“Oh,” Penelope said. “Makes sense,” Fatima agreed.
“Is it bad that I’m happy?” Carissa asked.
But then an icy wind unfurled from the woods.
Cold rain shattered on my back, and the girls,

laughing and screaming, ran home.
For the next hour I held on–not crying–
but wishing there was something, someone
who would save me. Years later,

Pen still proclaims: “The end is near!
The angels are just working out the kinks.”
Even as the Rapture arrives, as her body
brims with light and rises above our bed,

she tells me not to worry. “I know a guy,”
she winks. “We’ll get this sorted out.”
And afterwards, like the darkness that follows
prayer, when all the stars are revealed.

Todd Dillard’s work has appeared or is forthcoming in Threepenny Review, American Poetry Review, Southern Review, and elsewhere. His debut collection Ways We Vanish was a finalist for the 2021 Balcones Poetry Award, and his chapbook Ragnorak at the Father-Daughter Dance is available from Variant Literature. He lives outside Philadelphia with his wife and two kids.

by Todd Dillard

Did you know she liked fire?
The warmth yes but the burning more so.
The delight of a terrible draft
folded into a crane
and spiked into a hearth
some wrist-pale January morning.
She loved the little black clouds
that formed at the parchment’s edge,
then roiled over the disheveled
lines like a stampede dust.
And the smoke drifting out her chimney–
everyone agreed it waggled like a robe’s loose thread
which, if you yanked hard enough,
would unveil Death’s pale ankles
and he would yelp like a dog
dreaming of carriage-sized rabbits.

Todd Dillard’s work has appeared in numerous publications, including American Poetry Review, Guernica, Waxwing, Fairy Tale Review, and The Adroit Journal. His debut collection Ways We Vanish (Okay Donkey Press) was a finalist for the 2021 Balcones Poetry Award. His chapbook Ragnarök at the Father-Daughter Dance is forthcoming from Variant Literature. He is a Poetry Editor at The Boiler.

by Todd Dillard

I tell my daughter I fish for dark
in the backyard after she falls asleep.
I heave a rock aside,
opening a hole to the center of the earth,
drop a fishing line into it
and pull up snarls of shadows,
quilts of black, rags of mist. I say
they swim around my head
in the foam of the moon’s spilled beer
before swirling back into the earth.
I tell her she’s my best girl
and she tells me I’m her best dad
and at the push of a button I summon
the monsoon on her sound machine
and leave her on dreaming’s infinite porch.
The next day she comes home weeping.
Her friend called her stupid, ugly.
She wants to see the secret rock,
the hole from where I pull the dark.
Nothing else will,
she says, console her.
But my love, I say, there is no rock.
And her face stills.
There’s no hole to the center of the earth, I say.
And she opens her mouth.
There’s no darkness
that ripples overhead
through the current of the night.
From my daughter’s throat a shadow unfurls.
Long and thin at first, black eel,
but it grows
limbs, it stands.
It watches us–
not in an unkind way
–almost soft, the dim
around a pulsing night light.
As twilight sweeps over us
and it turns to vanish
into the dark, I wonder
should I call to it,
ask it to stay.

Todd Dillard’s work has appeared in Poet Lore, Waxwing, The Adroit Journal, Fairy Tale Review, and Guernica. His debut collection Ways We Vanish (Okay Donkey Press) was a finalist for the 2021 Balcones Poetry Award. He is a Poetry Editor at The Boiler Journal. Todd can be found on Twitter @toddedillard.