Maggie Frank-Hsu
Often hard or poor soil
is a fragile, complex mix.
a single season of flood
makes for wild
hurried blooming,
the rare chance
to be too much
before drying to stiff
bayonet-like leaves
that catch fire and burn easily;
a bell of sacred smoke
seen from a straight-back chair
beside the bay window
where nobody ever sat.
I have asked for so little, just
a drop in the dry season
to take hold on the soil surface.
Mahaila Smith
People are setting fires because they’re frustrated, angry, hopeless. They have no power to improve their lives, but they have the power to make others even more miserable. And the only way to prove to yourself that you have power is to use it.
—Octavia E. Butler
All of your objects will outlive you.
Here they are:
haunting your line of sight.
So set them aflame.
As in:
The whole world will outlive you
As in:
You are a dying god.
As in:
Welcome to Ragnarök,
welcome to the burning of the world.
A layer of ash coats the sides of trees,
cars, sidewalks, schools, deer,
lungs, arteries.
It is a dry summer.
There have always been fires,
they say,
These are no different.
They start with a spark of static,
a misused chainsaw,
a lighter
a can of gasoline
a metal shovel striking a rock.
We stay inside for days.
The burnt wood floors
and walls and wires
desensitize our noses
to the smell of lilacs.
D.W. Baker
summersong
hatchet fall
dead wood
flicker tall
ghost light
scattershot
warm wind
yellow spot
smoke ring
ash cloud
everything
out loud
slow blink
earthbound
Emma Wells
Crisp leaves orbit in hypnotising flares of gold, crimson and velvety brown. They form carpeted forest floors at my feet. My favourite time of year: autumn. Autumn always outstrips medals from the other three contesting seasons, without fail.
It is the sensory overload — the chill breeze that cools after heady sun-filled August days. Its tones lace around wrists and ankles like whispers, building momentum until there are splashes of life everywhere, like a messy canvas. Its hues are sublime, phenomenal, enticing me with elfin charm.
It is a love that endures with each changing fragment of the season: its individual selves that I’ve come to know, cherishing them like the changing faces of loved ones across a lifetime.
So I wondered how best to enjoy this praised, highly favoured season. It came to me relatively quickly: to camp, drinking in autumn’s mead-like scents. Keats and the Romantics had devoted years wondering at its magnetism — its ebbs and flows, its bounties and pitfalls. Inspired by the poets, I too longed to spend more time getting to know this fiery, auburn-haired sibling of summer.
I was joined on the camping trip by my husband, Alistair, and daughter, Molly. Our newly bought tent from Mountain Warehouse is our next challenge. Droplets of rain start to patter. Molly hates getting wet. I actually find it refreshing. My favourite time to run is in a light shower — so much better than dry, hydration-draining heat. I was definitely more of an autumnal creature, at one with the russet squirrels and caramel-flecked hedgehogs scurrying to cool dens.
A few hours later, and with the tent assembled, we make a campfire. The smell of toasted marshmallow is warming. I cannot stop staring at the toffee glimmer of the marshmallow’s skin. The crack of wooden logs splintering causes Molly to jump. She hears each crackle as a mischievous dragon roar, and springs from her seat in anticipation of every adrenaline-filled sound: the splintered-selves of the logs forming new identities.
Chargrilled bbq burgers follow, the reverse of a normal dinner; marshmallows are a quicker fix. Stomachs full, satiated, we began to doze into the lure of the hypnotising marmalade flames of the campfire; its climbing tongues near to licking the tree edges.
The sky ebbs to dusk — a wholeness which proceeds to fall above the downturned heads of the trees, ready to slumber. Drips fall from oversaturated leaves, over-spilling splurges, bouncing on the blue pyramidal sides of the canvas tent.
Woodland twittering builds in waves as creatures borrow boldness from the velveteen black cloak of night. In the cover of the dying light, hedgehogs scamper to new ground. They dare to tread a little farther, climbing to new earth, scourging for jewel-like morsels.
I tell Molly a few fireside bedtime stories — her favourites. She succumbs to the sweetness of rest and nods off, snuggling into me. I carry her gently, tucking her into her sleeping bag, cosy as a bug. As I stroke her hair, sleep pulls her deeper into the forest’s quilt-like eiderdown.
I return to the fireside, rekindling myself with a large glass of Shiraz in a plastic tumbler. Its warmth creeps down my throat, helping me to relax. Alistair joins me and we reminisce about camping trips as teens. The silly pranks, late night shenanigans, muffled laughter, sleepless dreams, and for me, most poignantly, the elf-like charm of the woods.
I am embedded within its roots; tendrils of me lie within the spongy, dun-hued soil, and percolate like ground coffee to its stony depths.
I muse back to childhood, recalling vivid, hallucinatory dreams. They were the best part of camping. I never slept like that at home. How strange. Why had I forgotten those dreams? Had I pushed them to one side to make way for motherhood?
Alistair holds his cup to mine and they gently clunk together. We toast to more woodland adventures. I don’t mention the lost dreams. I keep them close and locked away like personalised, prized treasures. Instead, we focus on camping trips in the future; we have all the kit now, so no excuses.
Made drowsy by the dancing flickers of the campfire flames, and the heady influence of the Shiraz, my head starts to tilt. I nod myself awake. The soft skittering of wildlife alarms me, reminding me where I am. I wander to our shared tent, unzip the closure slowly, so as not to disturb Molly. She rests — floating upon downy feathers.
I snuggle into my caterpillar-green sleeping bag, feeling like a chrysalis waiting to bloom. I wonder if Molly dreams of The Hungry Caterpillar and its mountainous realms of food as she snoozes in her sage-green outdoor duvet.
After reading under torchlight, my eyelids droop. I allow myself to sink beneath the edges of sleep’s silken folds. My limbs start to numb, letting go of camping-induced adrenaline and the novel buzz of the first night. I lightly touch the canvas of the tent, running a finger across it, sensing the cool air beyond. Sleep slowly envelops me into its drowsy, honeyed nectar.
“She’s asleep,” whispers Greta. “I can hear her breaths through the canvas. It is the same as when she was younger.”
“Let’s make ourselves comfortable, quietly so,” replies Handel.
The fairytale wood-sprites enter my lucidity; I hear their soft, dulcet tones, vibrating nostalgically as my brain matter reminisces to childhood. I know and warmly recognise golden-tinged voices, magical like potions: a witchcraft.
I reach out to hold Molly’s hand, a motherly instinct even in sleep, to check her safety. She gently squeezes my hand in recognition, her fingers knowing. I see, in my mind’s eye, a playful smile quiver on her lips.
She hears them too, breathing in their phantasmagorical magic.
In the leadup to our nineteenth issue bonfire, we shared a series of micropoems from our talented submitters:
Poetry Contributor
Faith Allington is a writer, gardener and lover of mystery parties who resides in Seattle. Her work is forthcoming or has previously appeared in various literary journals, including FERAL, Cosmic Daffodil, Gold Man Review, and Crab Creek Review.
Poetry Contributor
D.W. Baker is a poet and teacher from St. Petersburg, Florida who writes about place, bodies, belonging, and the end of the world. His work appears in Gastropoda Magazine, Green Ink Poetry, and Modern Haiku, among others, and has been nominated for Best of the Net. He is a poetry reader for Hearth & Coffin. See more at linktr.ee/dwbaker
