BLAZES
by Jean Howard
This pour of copper,
molten with clouds,
melts across January,
whose platinum stokes
its great fire.
It is as this day, last year,
that we inched you down
into the coal heart
of the earth
as sun celebrated
above,
And small clouds gathered
to watch
and learn your ways,
so they too, could go
out, in blazes.
______________________________
Jean Howard is a performance poet whose work has appeared or is forthcoming in Harper’s, Eclectica, Painted Bride Quarterly, Quiddity Literary Journal, Rattlesnake Review, Texas Poetry Review and many other journals as well as her book, Dancing In Your Mother’s Skin (Tia Chucha Press). Her award-winning video poems have aired on PBS, cable TV and festivals across the U.S. She helped develop the nationally acclaimed Poetry Slam at the Green Mill in Chicago and organized the National Poetry Video Festival.
July 2011