All the news is talking
about the lack of surgical masks
and ice cream trucks for the dead,
how many grandfathers
need help to breathe,
but today, I can’t seem to stop
wondering how oranges smell
when they’re burning.
For that, too, is something
I’ve never known, having missed
my one chance to walk
a few blocks to a supermarket
that caught fire years ago,
the hoses too late, asparagus
like kindling, cans of pasta sauce
popping like firecrackers
they say, though men will say
anything to make up
for what they can’t buy or steal:
wine bottles boiled dry,
rotisserie chickens charred
down to the size of a child’s fist,
a forest of Bible-ply burnt
before it can even assist
those places we keep hidden,
and everywhere, puddles
of plastic flowing mercurially
between shelves that topple
whether you’re looking or not.
But had I risen at the first sound,
the first engine’s wail
lancing through my hangover,
I, too, might have stood so close
that every apolitical shift
in the night breeze taught me
something new about dairy aisles,
snap peas heat-forged
into arrowheads, and oranges:
what sweet mist they offer,
wept from the inside out.
MICHAEL MEYERHOFER‘s fifth poetry book, Ragged Eden, was published by Glass Lyre Press. He has been the recipient of the James Wright Poetry Award, the Liam Rector First Book Award, the Brick Road Poetry Book Prize, and other honors. His work has appeared in many journals including Hayden’s Ferry, Rattle, Brevity, Tupelo Quarterly, and Ploughshares. He is also the author of a fantasy series and the Poetry Editor of Atticus Review. For more information and an embarrassing childhood photo, visit www.troublewithhammers.com.
