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(June 30, France) i I set the cookbook on fire by holding it close to the reading lamp ii I began the reading lamp fire by holding it close to romance iii I lit the romance by holding it close to the cookbook
Copyright © 2011 by Jeanne Marie Beaumont. Reprinted from Burning of the Three Fires with the permission of BOA Editions.
I think about the past. I empty the ice-cube trays crack crack cracking like bones, and I think of decades of ice cubes and of John Cheever, of Anne Sexton making cocktails, of decades of cocktail parties, and it feels suddenly far too lonely at my counter. Although I have on hooks nearby the embroidered apron of my friend's grandmother and one my mother made for me for Christmas 30 years ago with gingham I had coveted through my childhood.
The road out front is all torn up and has remained that way for a long time. One day they tractor-pulled the trunk of a fallen tree, its roots undone by the doings. Saw crews came in and buzzed for days like a disturbed hive. I could not save the flowers. Pyramids of pipe plastic appeared overnight. Rats, unsettled, bounced across the lawns, appalling the cats. All's ditches, trenches, ruts and pits. A week before the phones went dead, the sand trucks jilted their loads, shovels clanged, someone shouted Ho! ho! ho! like an unjollied Santa.