Jeffry Jensen
FLOODING BACK THE FLAMES
The river finally gave up the bodies,
but not without a fight,
not without a warning to the foolish.
I felt smothered by a shimmering
longitude, cut off by implausible
dreams of flammable contentment.
There were buses buried in mud,
taxis that never delivered their fares,
passports that never reached a border.
I listened for a native choir to
penetrate a sizzling latitude, to
rattle the boards of a growing isolation.
The river receded and gave back banks
where mothers had washed clothes.
Children set fire to mangled tires
and saw fathers in the flames.
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