Sarah Sousa is the author of three poetry collections, most recently See the Wolf, which was named a ‘Must Read’ Book in the Massachusetts Book Awards, as well as the chapbooks Yell and Hex.

“From the Book on Pit Firing Pottery” is the poetry winner of the 2019 Prose & Poetry Contest, selected by Analicia Sotelo.

I should have liked the burning more than I did.

The book on pit firing pottery said

feeding the fire, building the bed

of embers, is the best part; as primal

and satisfying as it gets. 

I wrapped four lopsided pots— 

friends have been so kind as to call wabi sabi 

or rustic—in newspaper, placed them gently 

on a bed of wood shavings. Each in its own way 

off-kilter. Each squat and misshapen lump of clay 

a fair representation of its maker. The inability to find

center, to grow vertically from it, 

to make the left side congruent with the right, 

in pottery, as in life, must be a vice. 

All my hopes lay in the fire.

For my pit, I settled on a metal trash can, 

layered paper, kindling, wood shavings, moss, 

bark from several trees suffering 

some kind of parasite, lichen, rusty barbed wire

and salt. All would bring the possibility 

of orange, brown, green and black aurora borealis

to the lumpy, subterranean surfaces of my pots. 

It’s hard to start a conflagration from the top, 

but harder to reach beneath 

the strange mound of combustible debris, eager

to quench my earthen hollows, earthen nests.

I used bellows, I used my breath

to keep the flames robust. I smoked and ashed myself

as much as the clay. When the fire got low, 

I threw in handful after handful 

of wood shavings from a bag of rabbit bedding

I bought at the pet store. The shavings burned 

to black volcanic ash. I poured more,

straight from the bag for good measure. 

The book’s one guarantee of alchemy:

wood shavings always result in an ebony finish,

the blackest of moonless nights descending. Essentially

a deep char, bread left in the oven, bones turned to coal. 

But burnt bread and bones will crumble;

my vessels (at this point in the process the book

says I may safely call them vessels) might hold 

wheat or lard, thread, beads, teeth. 

But not water. 

My fire couldn’t hope to be as hot 

and efficient as an electric kiln. 

Pots fired this way 

will always be porous. The book warned, 

what I was making wasn’t functional.

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