“You and I Are Disappearing”

            —Bjöm Håkansson

The cry I bring down from the hills

belongs to a girl still burning

inside my head. At daybreak

      she burns like a piece of paper.

She burns like foxfire

in a thigh-shaped valley.

A skirt of flames

dances around her

at dusk.

          We stand with our hands

hanging at our sides,

while she burns

          like a sack of dry ice.

She burns like oil on water.

She burns like a cattail torch

dipped in gasoline.

She glows like the fat tip

of a banker’s cigar,

      silent as quicksilver.

A tiger under a rainbow

   at nightfall.

She burns like a shot glass of vodka.

She burns like a field of poppies

at the edge of a rain forest.

She rises like dragonsmoke

    to my nostrils.

She burns like a burning bush

driven by a godawful wind.