Something You Left to Me

Owen McLeod

This box of apothecary vials with black rubber stops.
A strip of masking tape runs the length of each vial.Scribbled on each strip, the name of a national park:
Zion, Yosemite, Yellowstone, Redwood—nine bottles in all, but you wanted still more
before the thing in your lungs finally killed you.The vials look empty, but I know they’re not—
not because you told me, but because I was there.Each contains air from the park on the label,
air the only stuff you could steal without guilt.You’d hold the vial above your head and explain
how no one can die while surrounded by beauty.Which is why it ended in a machine-filled room,
stifling, falsely lit, encircled by a plastic curtain.Air was all you needed.  I should have crawled in,
unstopped the vials, and touched each mouth to your lips.

Feature Date

Series

Selected By

Share This Poem

Print This Poem

Owen McLeod’s first book of poems, Dream Kitchen, won the 2018 Vassar Miller Prize in Poetry (judged by Rosanna Warren) and will be published by University of North Texas Press in 2019. His poems have recently appeared in Boulevard, FIELD, The Massachusetts Review, New England Review, Ploughshares, The Southern Review, and elsewhere. He teaches philosophy, makes pottery, and lives in Pennsylvania. www.owenmcleodpoetry.com

The Yale Review

18-Jan

New Haven, Connecticut

Yale University

Editor
Meghan O'Rourke

Managing Editor
Andrew Heisel

Since 1911, The Yale Review has been publishing new works by the most distinguished contemporary writers—from Virginia Woolf to Vladimir Nabokov, from Robert Frost to Eudora Welty. The journal’s pages have, for almost a century, been filled with the most exhilarating and astute writing of our times. Under the editorship of J. D. McClatchy, himself a prize-winning poet, The Yale Review presents up-and-coming writers, explores the broader movements in American thought, science, and culture, and reviews the best new books in a variety of fields.

“I look forward to The Yale Review because I know I will encounter historians and poets, essayists and reviewers, who will take me on the most intriguing excursions beyond the headlines.”
—Peter Jennings, Broadcast Journalist

“It’s good news that this noble, long-established periodical is back in circulation.”
—Iris Murdoch

The Yale Review, with its distinguished history, is one of the very finest of American literary journals. Its thoughtfully edited contents include both imaginative and critical writing of a very high—and entertaining—order.”
—Joyce Carol Oates

Poetry Daily Depends on You

With your support, we make reading the best contemporary poetry a treasured daily experience. Consider a contribution today.