Mary Ann Honaker
California is on fire
again. Again the time-lapse
footage of flames skipping
toward and over the highway.
An online archive of lost pets.
Horses fleeing cloaked in smoke,
as if seen through sheer white curtains.
Evacuations. Friends marking themselves
safe on Facebook. One fleeing family
lived only two years in this house;
the last one also eaten by wind-whipped
blaze. A new Facebook acquaintance
writes California is on fire after they said
they didn’t want God. Oh well.
I’m up all night after that one.
How the only response is Amen.
In spite of everything I still believe
that people are really good at heart,
wrote Anne Frank,
I think that it will all come right,
that this cruelty too will end.
As for me, I’ve become Giles Corey—
It’s just another brick among many;
our world grows heavier and heavier,
and every word makes it harder to breathe.
Mary Ann Honaker is the author of It Will Happen Like This (YesNo Press, 2015) and Becoming Persephone (Third Lung Press, 2019). Her poems have appeared in 2 Bridges, Drunk Monkeys, Euphony, Juked, Little Patuxent Review, Off the Coast, Van Gogh’s Ear, and elsewhere. Honaker holds an MFA in creative writing from Lesley University. She lives in Beckley, West Virginia.
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