Poetry
Careful with the Knife
Victor McConnell
issue four
Take a knife,
pare away the bark,
find what is underneath.
Make it smooth,
make it into something, a tool.
Something aesthetic,
or nothing at all,
just whittling for the sake of whittling.
Remove the outer layer of wood
not to see what’s underneath
(she already knows that, or thinks she does)
but to expose it
and then
to hold it in her hands
to let another touch it,
that exposed part.
Feel the wood now.
Smooth, unadorned.
Back to childhood,
A girl on a front porch
made of wood too, of course.
Holding that stick
found in the forest,
And the pocketknife her father gave her,
A little bit of danger,
A little bit of creation.
Whittling away,
working around the knots, the tricky parts,
then as now.
Different settings, different knives,
different bits of wood.
More or less patient,
but in the end, seeking
– and perhaps finding –
a thing she didn’t know was there
beneath the bark.
Hidden all these years,
a surprising twist or pattern in the wood,
something only uncovered
when she’s very patient and
very careful with the knife.
About the Author
Victor McConnell grew up in a small town in Texas and graduated from Dartmouth’s creative writing program in 2004. After a year in a wheelchair in 2005 and a long, mostly dormant period from 2010-2019, he resumed writing fiction and poetry in 2020. His work has appeared in a variety of literary journals, such as The Los Angeles Review, Dogwood, and Driftwood Press, among others. His first book, a collection of short stories titled WHEN EVEN THE BONES HAVE THINNED, is scheduled for publication in late-2025. He has a 14-year-old son and lives in Golden, Colorado. More of his work can be found at www.victormcconnellauthor.com.
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