Flammagenitus Strophes

Sandra Simonds

You pick me up late

a viscous outflow

from the volcanic ledge

of my thinking.

Me in my duplex-hunger,

in my firestorm-astonished

dress, the pattern of crisp asphalt,

the pattern, simple condensed

nuclei, against my dry

lightning ache. You pick me up late

and we drive through

polyhedronated structures

of sound and civics-minded lives,

lives bearing fruit with no regard

for the termination-tables

recently made, vast ledgers

of waste, of debits,

of human trees.

Debris is my name I say

as we drive past

the decibels, the altostratusly

hung steeples, debris is

my name I say, wind

streaming in filaments,

collecting in the gulch,

our mouths barely resonating.