In Australia, something chemical—
as all things are— crosses out the sun
infusing the charred body of the koala
to the charred body of the tree.
My mother tells me to pray
to the goddess in the form of the New
Caledonian crow, but what if fire
is the only god left? A line of bleeding
shadow constructs the distance between
light and combustion. On the beach
people wait //displaced// by another sun.
Black balloons swell, storm
up. Incendiary dust parades
indifferent through the memorandum
of walls— livelihood of what
keeps in and keeps out. Differentiation
is lost here. All is made
into foamy-mouthed monism.
The formula for fire the sticky
loofah that shrieks to clean
is that there is no formula. Just tar
in the lungs dehydrated
skulls trees drinkers of carbon
burning what is absorbed
expelled into that terrible red. The old
crone of a crow goddess calls in
her children the glossy black cockatoo
the pouched frog. They are acclimated
into apotheosis cheap allegory made
almost bodiless almost departed
from the earth altogether. We
thought we could control it,
that what is cooked in the hole
is distinguished from who is doing
the cooking but then a flash
a burning bush
our divination through coal.
