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issue 3: HEATWAVE

fire season

RIVER ELIZABETH HALL
Charred carbon inkblots
rorschach the landscape,
edge the highways,
creep the forest floor.

Fire seethes in creek beds,
scalds mud-dust,
hisses grass black.

It scales trees, and
slap-crackles the sap.
On spark whipped wind,
fire bounds-- crown to crown to crown.

In muffled daylight,
choked still in smoke-shadow,
firefighters awed by flames,
stack their blacked hands
on top of helmets
on top of heads.
​
Then, they turn and run.

River Elizabeth Hall is a writer, educator and a naturalist. Her poems and short fiction have recently appeared or are forthcoming in Cirque, Into the Void, Sunspot Lit, and Tinderbox among others. Twitter: @RiverEHall.
perhappened mag
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header photo: matt howard (unsplash)

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