_____Fire is speech.
__________– “The Female Arsonist”
There is a man inside
_____the house, teaching
the living room how to burn.
_____He has already
appeared to the sofa, he has
_____already been kind
to the cat. The slow fatality
_____of glass, flower vases
starting to bubble. I imagine
_____this. I don’t move,
or go inside. I sit on a paver
_____on the lawn;
I think other kindnesses:
_____of gravy, a living-well,
the cabinets leaning open
_____like mothers—
saying eat well, sit a spell,
_____ eat well. And in the dark
under my stone the ground
_____is hiding, ground
of worms, ground of salt,
_____ground of the tapering
tunnels filled soon
_____with the birth flight
of cicadas. They will shriek, speak.
_____They won’t open their mouths.