by Bill Wolak
Destruction: A Brief Description
After Mike Smith
Dream images, nuclear bombs exploding
denote the death of a flame that rises
across a snow-covered field and
melts the frozen sparkling particles,
flying the face of the yellowish orb
and acting as a parody of sunblock.
I wondered if the picture of that field
would last in the recesses of my mind—
trauma is often its own executioner.
We drove past the scene and glared
at the ruins—someone told us to move on,
and we looked at the billboards that advertised
various brands of baking soda while searching
for the way back on the map.
someone somewhere was glancing at their photographs,
glad to have been at the right place
at the right time. The fog was still thick,
as it always had been.
After we left, the rain began to come down. She looked
at the map and concluded that we were extremely far from
anywhere. A misshapen cockroach attached itself to the windshield,
its miniscule legs grasping onto the shatterproof glass for dear life.
we decided to make a U-turn and head the other way—the rain became
softer now. Someone asked us for directions, and we just laughed.
The sun peeked out for a second, and we remarked at its serendipitous
qualities. The illusion of brightness was what made us come here.
Laurel Kaish is a writer and academic administrator living in the Chicagoland area. She holds a BA in Writing from Lake Forest College and uses poetry to converse with herself and others. You can find her on Bluesky: @lkaish.bsky.social.
Bill Wolak has just published his eighteenth book of poetry entitled All the Wind’s Unfinished Kisses with Ekstasis Editions. His collages and photographs have appeared as cover art for such magazines as Phoebe, The Passionfruit Review, Inside Voice, and Barfly Poetry Magazine.