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Wildfire

Amy Roa
| poetry

 

The boars were digging up the other side of the field, and already years have passed since the electrical discharge sitting atop a thunderstorm leaped across the forest overpacked with trees to make
a crown of fire.
The horses saw it. In places where they grazed, the ground was full of rabbit holes and flames.
My grandmother stood on the curb trying to make sense of the landscape.
“You’ll have to spit on your hand to find a gap in this fire,” she said.
All her memories had collapsed, so she’d often ask who I was and why I’d brought
all this smoke with me.
“How did you get here? By foot or by horse?”
“Foot,” I said. “The herd climbed the wire fence and the gravity pulled them apart. You could see their ears swiveling, the whites of the eyes, too.”
My grandmother looked concerned.
“Well, it’s getting hot here. Take off your boots and coat. I’ll go bury them out back and pretty soon they’ll look like mushroom spores,” she said happily.

 

Amy Roa is the author of the poetry collection Radioactive Wolves (Steel Toe Books, 2023).

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Upon Crossing the Brooklyn Bridge While Wildfires Brush Through Quebec
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