by L. Acadia
Portrait of a Telephone Pole Burning to a Crisp in Doyle, CA
You’ve stopped calling me. Perhaps you never did.
My imagination has always been out of hand.
Better to be dreaming,
I whisper into a warm mattress. In the hours where any face can be your
face, any hands your hands, fingers pushing into a bank of skin. My skin.
My makeshift paradise.
I watch the wires go up in smoke.
They crack with impatience. Get it over with. Where are you tonight?
I’m watching the news; more land is eaten alive in a single-breathed
gulp. My limbs twist because you should be here. Flames trace a
halo. The telephone pole becomes a sacred object as it combusts.
We have that in common.
You have forgotten me [me, this city, this bone dry garden].
In bed, the night sky behind my eyes is superimposed
with footage of houses made into ribcages, bellies full of
embers and smoke.
The telephone pole takes a lifetime to topple. Our savior spreads his
arms, nailed to the cross, watching us from the blaze.
You are making new beds.
You are tasting holy water I cannot provide. God, this drought is endless.
You’ve stopped calling me; but the telephone wires are alive tonight. They dance their final agony.
They speak so we don’t have to.
Daniel Brennan (he/him) is a resident of New York City but grew up in the Blue Ridge Mountains of Pennsylvania (ultimately serving as a focused source of ecology-based inspiration). As a member of the LGBTQ+ community, Brennan’s work aims to capture both the vastness we feel in the face of our ever-changing planet, while confronting our own bodies and the daunting elements of intimacy we feel every day. His work has appeared in CP Quarterly and Grand Little Things. He currently lives in Manhattan and works full-time in advertising.
L. Acadia is a lit professor at National Taiwan University, a dog pillow at home, and otherwise searching Taipei for ghosts and vegan treats. L. has a PhD from Berkeley and creative work published or forthcoming in Autostraddle, The Dodge, Lothlorian Poetry Journal, Neologism Poetry Journal, Neon Door, Subterranean Blue Poetry, and Typehouse Magazine. Twitter and Instagram: @acadialogue.