BRUSH-FIRE WAR
Thomas Laverty
They couldn’t take the girls away from their
mother; the house a flaming pile behind them.
In 1862 two old men who acted like oak trees
built the town. It burns from the river
to the last potato field in the north.
People are rising up like dandelion seeds
from the ash. I am a thousand miles away,
In an orange grove listening to the leaves
tell me the names of the dead. Back in Tbilisi
a man eats his tie, the world believes the lies he tells.
Here in the citrus, I am half clown
and half soldier. A woman with lines on her face
touches my shoulder and says,
“Let me show you what it’s like to be a horse.”