ISSN: 1941-4137
POETRY THAT ENACTS THE ARTISTIC AND CREATIVE PURITY OF GLASS
POETRY THAT ENACTS THE ARTISTIC AND CREATIVE PURITY OF GLASS
Đỗ Nguyên Mai is a Vietnamese American poet from Santa Clarita, California who is currently pursuing a doctorate degree in political science at the University of California, Riverside. They are the author of Ghosts Still Walking (Platypus Press, 2016) and Battlefield Blooming (Sahtu Press, forthcoming 2019).
Poets Resist
Edited by Kanika Lawton
July 2, 2019
Edited by Kanika Lawton
July 2, 2019
California
The most destructive wildfire in California history
is nowhere near done with its catastrophic
rampage.
— Holly Yan and Susannah Cullinane
CNN. Nov. 12, 2018
Again, a child firefights
on the containment line.
We sent prisoners to keep the flames
from jailing us. It didn’t work.
Here, it only snows during fire season.
Ash buries the beach, the dead
incinerated into snowfall.
What is the wildfire but the way we consume
ourselves, catastrophe collapsed under catastrophe.
A body is trapped in a car is trapped in California.
From the melting radio speakers, a lone caller pleads
for a song other than “White Christmas.”
It plays in November anyway.
After 24 hours, another shift starts.
A child hands a hose to another child
and sleeps, unease stifled by exhaustion.
Don’t worry, just sleep.
It’s still home when it’s burning.
It’s still home when
it’s gone.
As a native Californian, the increasingly violent and catastrophic wildfires ravaging Californian cities and towns has remained a serious threat to the survival of my community, and this poem is a bit of a meditation on how fires are so intrinsically intertwined in Californian identity despite being one of the biggest threats to our existence.
Poets Resist is published by Glass Poetry Press.
All contents © the author.
All contents © the author.
