how to start a fire
by Michael Eaton
Looking at you ignites
lust; you are dry kindling,
during a drought,
stacked underneath the wood
pile, carelessly left unguarded,
your incendiary qualities
quite forgotten by your
husband, a negligence
that allows homes
to burn to the ground,
destroying families inside,
batteries dead in their alarms
with no advance warnings
of the coming conflagration.
Fire burns in your hair
and flames play between
your slender fingers.
If we take the next step,
and lie in the next bed we find,
the mattress will alight
without a dropped cigarette.
Neighbors will flee the condos
in pajamas and bare feet,
as a blaze of red trucks,
bringing water and hoses,
siren their banshee wails
through the dark wet streets.
They will be too late.
There will be nothing left
but glowing red ashes,
the woody smell of smoke,
and exposed, scorched plumbing.
The inspectors will suspect arson;
they will pinpoint the flash point of ignition,
will discover the
images of two smiles melted
into the blackened sheets.
Michael Eaton Growing up in Littlefield, TX, rather than receiving his knowledge in the public schools, he spent his weekly allowance on paperback books learning about the world from writers like Steinbeck and Faulkner. He graduated from San Francisco State University during the experimental years of the sixties while living in a commune, with a MA in Creative Writing. He writes to stay sane in an insane world. Currently living in Austin, TX helping to keep it weird.