On Saturdays in America

When the world is spiraling off its axis,
more than normal that is,
one may still catch the bus
just in the nick of time.
This is the privilege
of Empire, of what passes for
power, of being impervious
to the harm you bring. Many
are this way. Even on a new
spring day, in the gift of
thaw, even then
they long for destruction.
It intoxicates them.
No one knows the counter
to this mass delusion,
to having everything
and longing for more.
Longing to dominate,
to play war. Posturing
of stunted men, play
soldier, real dead.
More dead. Death
even in spring. Even on
the beach. From the
sky, from the algorithm’s
hive mind, arm of the machine
that wishes to impose
suffering. Glee of those
doing it, and self-
congratulations. I think
there is no counter.
I think there is
only running to the bus,
coming from your
friend’s birthday,
going to see music,
to dance, riding the route
with your neighbors.
Thanking the bus driver.
Knowing we are the
same as those elsewhere.
Knowing what is destructed
is just this. Knowing it
is wrong. Living for them.
Living until we lose the
power that protects us,
until it may fall apart.
It always falls apart,
eventually.
Living, in spring,
waiting for Nowruz,
blood moon
approaching.
What is written
and what may change?
Even the moon
will change, one day.
Live knowing this.
Run for your bus,
and catch it.

Firewood Management

There is nothing so human as fire, Promethean,
special power of our cursed kind

I like to burn every piece of fuel in the house,
leave none behind,
salvage the cardboard in the bin,
watch the used paper towels flare up,
quick flash of grease consumed

Something so dangerous made so contained,
that, even when it fails to catch,
hard labor will revive. Whose glowing
embers will ignite even an uncured log.

Sacrifice all the fuel you have;
what use is conserving it?
The sound of it, companion in a lonely night,
sparks up the flue, offerings to heaven,
special playground of hell, private ritual

I’m drawn to it, as they say, like a moth to flame,
even think of the smoke as blessing, anointing you,
the potent infusion heady days later, lingering

The comfort that if we lost all this—the tech,
the internet, televisions, cars, air friers,
batteries of all shapes and sizes,
gadgets and useless inventions as well as
as life-saving ones—there would still be
more worth living for than can be contained
in even the largest bonfire,
enough to worship, enough to persist,

All this in the hearth, the firepit,
even the humble candle, the match,
the ignominious lighter, watching it build up
and burn down again and again,
just as sometimes our own lives must do.
So strike the match.

Poem at Arcadia

At the play B cries,
for his recently departed father,
for the daughter who will
one day die,
for how he will one day too
leave her alone. I
imagine this is why he cries.
Thomasina ascends in flame.

Later, on the escalator,
I cry as well:
for how much the
daughter means to me,
for the privilege
of bearing witness
to each other’s lives.
We get on the train.  





Nora Rawn works in subrights in publishing and lives in Brooklyn. She has had pieces published or forthcoming in Dodo Eraser, Dreck Lit, Be About It Press, Burning House, Electric Pink, Tap Into Poetry, Burial Magazine, Some Words, and Michigan City Review of Books.

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