Fire
Matthew Dickman


Oh, fire—you burn me! Ed is
singing
behind the smoke and coals, his
wife near him, the rest of us
below the stars
swimming above Washington
state,
burning through themselves,
he's like an Appalachian Prince
Henry with his banjo
and whiskey. The court
surrounding him and the deer
off in the dark hills like the
French, terrified
but in love and hungry.
I'm burning all the time. My 
pockets full of matches
and lighters, the blue smoke
crawling out like a skinny ghost
from between my lips.
My lungs on fire, the wings
of them falling grom the open
sky. The tops of Michelle's long
hands
looked like the beautiful coats
leopards have, covered in dark
spots. All the cigarettes she
would light
and then smash out, her eyes
the color of hair spray, cloudy
and stingy
and gone, but beautiful! She
carried her hands around
like two terrible letters of
introduction. I never understood
who could have opened them, 
read them aloud,
and still thrown her onto a bed,
still walked into the street she
was, still
lit what little fuse she had left.
Oh, fire—
you burn me. My sister and I
and Southern Comfort
making us singe and spark, the
family
ash all around us, the way she is
beautiful to me in her singular
blaze,
my brain lighting up, my tongue
like a monk in wartime, awash
in orange silk and flames.
The first time I ever crushed a 
handful of codeine into its
universe
of powdered pink, the last time
I felt the tangy aspirin drip of
ecstacy down my throat,
the car losing control, the sound
of momentum, this earth is not 
standing
still, oh, falling elevator—
you keep me, oh, graveyard—
you have been so patient, ticking
away, smoldering—
you grenade. Of, fire,
the first time I ever took a drink
I was doused with gasoline,
that little ember perking up
inside me, flashing, beginning to
glow and climb.