Some Kinds of Fire

Tina Cane

               Anna Akhmatova burned
her poems and the light of Madrid was like water

at La Latina luncheonette I ate a cup of chocolate
and a motor oil churro 

every day for a week
recovering

                      ...the cherry bomb alley that was our street
Hotel Chelsea ablaze from a rum-soaked pillow and a cigarette, 1977

iron balconies were dropping like lace
windows were popping like sobs...

"Can you describe this?" someone asked

Anna Akhmatova
as she stood on line "Yes"

she said "I can"

Year of the Murder Hornet

year of the cloud of pollen that chased me to my car across the supermarket parking lot

year I was overpowered by flowering magnolia petals in a windstorm while walking home

year of the murder hornet and coronavirus and weather as a system that shaped each day

in a way that felt different from the past year during which you understood how the neighborhood

Tina Cane

2020

Shelter in Place

Schools are shuttered everything is cancelled and my body has become

an extension of my house this shift is strange but not entirely unfamiliar

the way a cardinal’s home is a disordered stick bomb just about captures

how I feel

how the mother bird uses her shape as a template to form her nest

Tina Cane

2020

Youngest Son

We used to laugh and say he was naked and flying around with the stars

before he came down to be with us these days he says When I was dead

because naked means sexy and he’s not a baby knows what sex is

would rather be dead but I don’t want the word dead around my kids

or around any mother’s son so I say Honey, you were never dead

Tina Cane

2019

Poems

Some Kinds of Fire

More by this poet

Year of the Murder Hornet

Shelter in Place

Youngest Son

Poems

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Some Kinds of Fire

More by this poet

Year of the Murder Hornet

Shelter in Place

Youngest Son

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