In the burned house I am eating breakfast.
You understand: there is no house, there is no breakfast,
yet here I am.

The spoon which was melted scrapes against 
the bowl which was melted also.
No one else is around.

Where have they gone to, brother and sister,
mother and father? Off along the shore,
perhaps. Their clothes are still on the hangers,

their dishes piled beside the sink,
which is beside the woodstove
with its grate and sooty kettle,

every detail clear,
tin cup and rippled mirror.
The day is bright and songless,

the lake is blue, the forest watchful.
In the east a bank of cloud 
rises up silently like dark bread.

I can see the swirls in the oilcloth,
I can see the flaws in the glass,
those flares where the sun hits them.

I can’t see my own arms and legs
or know if this is a trap or blessing,
finding myself back here, where everything

in this house has long been over,
kettle and mirror, spoon and bowl,
including my own body,

including the body I had then,
including the body I have now
as I sit at this morning table, alone and happy,

bare child’s feet on the scorched floorboards
(I can almost see)
in my burning clothes, the thin green shorts

and grubby yellow T-shirt
holding my cindery, non-existent,
radiant flesh. Incandescent.

^{after Alvin Baltrop & Frank O’Hara}

Glorious!                     what mountain 
of mouths i could boulder my tongue 
from. what bountiful luck i must 
have acquired to own a debt 
from every man. i like this type of sweet; 
tongue stained in mulberry 
blood like new york concrete in june. and here 
we are again in june. with all the summer’s 
bees and root beer floats and boys screaming 
laughter into the jaws of a sprinkler head. and i, too, am 
so joyful here, i have forgotten that january 
ever existed. can you smell the bark? the branches 
and men slumping with fruit? i will miss this 
come fall, when the wind turns 
a sugared maple. it’s so cliche to cling 
to the boys i once kissed, but i will admit it, 
i have loved a boy ragged until the last 
leaf fell from his gums. 

The Everglades are burning. I’m fifteen.
I open the window, knock out the screen

and crawl up the tiles to the apex of the roof.
Overhead the black clouds march on hooves

from the sunset to the ocean. It’s rare for the wind
to carry the sugar burns in my direction.

I assume the purpose of the fires is to make
the sugar sweeter, but besides covering the state

in smoke, all they do is make the harvest cheaper.
Some men spent a fortune to drain the river

but the cost was all up front. The stalks get so dry some-
times a piece of lightning starts the fire for them

and what’s left behind can’t help becoming tinder.
I think the land will tire of not being water soon.
 
Tonight the air is cold and smells like winter.
Ashes fall around me like pieces of the moon.