Tuesday poem #541 : Lynn McClory : Flammable Language

 

 

We used to say flammable fabric and now we say flammable

landscape:  The landscape fabric is flammable. The landscape

is burning—I am repeatedly thin writing, thinking smoke in the air,

eyes, ears, nose, mouth—Remember the reeling of sentient life,

eyes red watering, inflammable traffic between my singing ears,

thinking singeing. Hear it come out of my mouth without thinking,

out of my eyes, out of my ears. No one needs mouths mouthing

the words in silent singeing. Now I can write flammable language

sentient thinking: Fires are burning all the trees in breathing lands

vanishing forever in warming air smothering life on the brink, fires

heating floors on the seas. Remember the reeling of sentient life,

eyes red watering, is memory questioning thinking. No one heeds

flammable language singing smoke and fire into the burning trees.

Now we can say fires are lightening igniting flammable traffic into

the air, forecasts deliberate, accidental, incidental, insurmountable   

ranging, raging fires across straw-strewn, flat lands, climbing hills,

descent to valleys, clear-cut fires, clouds stone-grey, cashew skies.

Now we say: No one needs toxic fires, we need sacred fires in our

singing vocabulary, eyes red watering, remembering sentient lives.

 

 

 

 

Lynn McClory is a Toronto poet. Her poems are archived in ditch poetry, The Rusty Toque and The Puritan. Recent poems have been translated into Spanish in several issues of La Presa, a translation journal from Guanajuato City, Mexico. Her chapbook, Affective Influence, was published by Frog Hollow Press (2021). Currently, she is writing poems for her manuscript on losses in the environment.

the Tuesday poem is curated by rob mclennan