breathing in the ash of 34000 dead
& the soot tastes like selfishness
hot & salt-tinged the way
the scent of death lingers
in the cloudline—
a faint grey smoke.
fires burning through the night
like train engines & still
not enough flame
for each of us—
pleading for warmth
we find instead refrigerator trucks
their jaws agape like flytraps
long steel throats opening—
waiting for prey.
earlier this week I learned that los angeles has temporarily suspended the air quality regulations that restrict the number of cremations that can happen in a day. there are so many dead from covid-19 mortuaries have not been able to keep up. the image of the air around us full of the ash of the dead has haunted me this week, so I wrote a poem about it.