POETRY
paradise ablaze
. . . without cultural fire and a willingness to burn, wildfires will occur, and that is a consequence of not burning. To recognize that fire is the law of the land is to recognize that it is part of the laws of nature.
— Good Fire, written for the Karuk Tribe, March 2021.
maybe it started as a bonfire / foi de vivre / smokey
disgruntled bear / California dreaming / weed burning / no
i can’t make light / ignis ossium / 85 reliquiae
exhumed so far / my thumbs scroll the news / tick up
the tally with each revision / i’m losing names
for what we’re counting / some homes
still stand in paradise / who wants to inherit a big
big house / with lots and lots of food / beside the grilled
bones of the luckless / no winning this lottery’s
barren charity / try to breathe / fire chancing clean
past your chimney / to erase the neighbors / no apostrophe
for possessions / anyones now / your boy
smoked from second grade / his bus driver
finds all the little children / tears apart his sweat
stained shirt / sickly sweet rags on their lips / gates
soot from kindling lungs / they’re calling him
a savior / he knows not what to do / the wheel
sears flesh from his palms / the class holds hands
to pray / but which deity blisters / not angelfaced
Lucifer / mourning the paling dazzle of stars / my daddy too
was just a kid / once upon a time / i was every fairy
tale / a lilith / a hellion / in heaven i’m gonna be
that punk pyro flake who won’t stop
flicking the lighter / flitch / flitch / one thumb to tame
planets / mercurial marred fat earth / phlogiston
hisses inside me / imitation recherche / i’m trying to scream
my throat raw / one me stays in paradiso / the other craves
to ire / self-immolation / is that so mad / to wish to kiss
the warmth of fellow souls / though they’re made of skin
charred plutonian / Bồ Tát Thích Quảng Đức’s heart intact
despite the blaze / have you held the photograph / don’t tell me
his atman lingered / because he trusted some
wrong god / didn’t i just tell you / there’s only one
Elohim ḥayyim / Holocaust his Christian name / in vain we’re baked
sussing smokes from teeth / sleeping bag from shirt / you
from the mélange of me / the slowest beat / does anything kill
faster than light / our temporary neighbors the celestials / we wave
still-lit stubs from rustbucket windows / dry grass passing through
paradise / but rain’s the forecast / campfire plans awry / they’ll call it
an act of god / cosmic control-shift-delete / scrubbed corpses
rise from ashes / glue modicum-a-modicum / and it’s easy
isn’t it / when we forget the threat of flame / memory lane
hide-and-seek / your tiny voice before it cracked / count
to 85 / don’t peek between your chiffony fingers / peep
we would shout / when we weren’t sure of being found
