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“Hanging Fire” consists of three stanzas that follow the movement of the speaker’s thoughts and feelings. This real-time unfolding of the speaker’s experience gives the poem the characteristic structure of lyric poetry. In this particular case, however, the rapid movement from one thought to the next is more extreme than the typical lyric poem. Instead, it more closely approximates a technique known as stream-of-consciousness, which mimics the nonlinear flow of a character’s thoughts, perceptions, and associations. As an example, consider lines 12–15:

     I have to learn how to dance
     in time for the next party
     my room is too small for me
     suppose I die before graduation

In this passage, the link between one thought and the next is often quite tenuous. For instance, it isn’t clear why the speaker complains about the size of her room immediately after saying she needs to learn to dance before the next party. Perhaps she thinks about practicing her dance moves in her room, but then realizes she doesn’t have enough space. But if that’s the association she makes in her head, it remains implicit. A similarly unclear chain of association links the speaker’s complaint about her room to her anxiety about dying before graduation. Once again, her logic is nonlinear and opaque, which leaves the reader to fill in what’s missing.

In addition to the rapid flow of thoughts and associations, the poem is also structured by the refrain that repeats at the end of each stanza. Though the speaker floats quickly from one thought to another, she always returns to the same observation: “and momma’s in the bedroom / with the door closed” (lines 10–11; 22–23; and 34–35). The way the speaker circles back to her mother’s closed bedroom door suggests that the speaker might be in her home and repeatedly returning to see if the door is still shut. This circling pattern indicates that there’s one worry that troubles her more than anything else. Despite her many anxieties and insecurities about what’s going on in her life, the speaker’s core concern relates to the closed channel of communication with her mother. Unable to rely on this foundational relationship, the speaker is left to deal with her troubles by herself. And for this reason, her thoughts keep spinning round and round.

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