It was supposed to be a classic mid-range blue designated as Clandestine Sky, or some other evocative variation of late-day dusk light. We need our blue to be unequivocally clean and unencumbered without a trace of coercion—a clear bell ringing all around us. We are desperate for the calming influence blue can provide. There’s gravity to it that registers as comfort like a weighted blanket.
truce at the end of the day starlight
Instead we get Apocalypse Orange, shot up like a roadway flare lighting the skid marks and crumpled metal. A smoke-filled chokehold that robs us of an entire day of sunlight. This color doesn’t warrant a name. It needs a number—a threat level. It smacks of survivor-less-ness, which leaves us searching for new coordinates. There’s no way to back out of this slowly.
wildfire
in the dry foothills
a shroud of smoke
is an associate editor for The Heron’s Nest. Her short prose and poems
have appeared in 100 Word Story, KYSO Flash, Mid-American Review, MacQueen’s
Quinterly, Modern Haiku, Moon City Review, Quarter After Eight, SmokeLong Quarterly,
Unbroken, and Wigleaf. Her work was nominated for a Pushcart Prize and
is anthologized in Nothing Short of 100 (Outpost 19, 2018), Accidents
of Light: KYSO Flash Anthology 2018 (KYSO Flash Press), and NOON: An Anthology
of Short Poems (Isobar Press, 2019).
Recent collections include a prose poem e-chapbook, Qualia (White Knuckle
Press, 2017), and a collection of short poetry, for Want (Ornithopter Press,
2017). She is also the author of two award-winning haiku collections: apology
moon (Red Moon Press, 2013) and The Horse with One Blue Eye (Snapshot
Press, 2006).
