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Why not?  This place is burning to the ground.

The workers are gone, flown off like vultures.

The embers are oily and stark, as black

and vengeful as the eyes of once lovers

now soulless to you in your soulful eyes.

Isn't there something in this heat, this white

ash from our bed of stinging, flightless flies?

Isn't there some flint of wet delight

apart from the fire?  Some cool other shore?

You know that our resolve is lusterlack,

that we, tweenbe, are combusted sutures,

that this blueprint, charred, this foundation, ruined,

this best guess, blown, this parting of the briars,

dangerous, is the smiling face of desire.



originally published in LiveMag

anthologized in Devouring the Green (Jaded Ibis, 2015)