A Poem by Will Falk
Another summer hits the suburbs. It’s so hot
that only machines make ice or breezes.
Dazed dogs lick blistered paws, whine in the shade.
They are forced to claim their lazy namesake.
I hide with the dogs and watch hallucinations rise
from the haze sun and blacktop make.
When everything is plastic, everything is everywhere,
and everything melts, everything smells like oil,
even flowers. The dogs and I beg for something
cool, and if not something cool, something
real, or, at least, something that smells better.
The worst part of burning alive is your own stink.
The dogs stop whining, start barking: a vision
of a lone, thin doe remembering old deer trails,
ignoring every road. She stalks the sweet scent
of green shoots. Her ribs mean the grasses are gone
and with the grasses, what her two speckled fawns
need. She settles for roses. The dogs understand
or their paws hurt too much to give chase.
With lips curled back to avoid thorns, the doe
gingerly picks the rose bushes clean. Her tongue
still bleeds. Her offering drips to the soil.
She can spare her blood but not her milk.
When the sun finally sets, the stems are bare,
and the specters of what this land once was
retreat, I venture out to check. Blood-flecked
rose petals, cool to the touch, prove
the thin, lone doe was real.
Will Falk (he/him) is a biophilic writer and lawyer. The natural world speaks and Falk’s work is how he listens. His first collection of poetry When I Set the Sweetgrass Down was released by Wayfarer Books. He is an MFA candidate through Western Colorado University’s Graduate Program in Creative Writing.