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
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