BURNING HOUSE PRESS

First Miracle

A burning log fell through the air like a ship, a plank
fell onto a field of black and tinged it blue.
If the field is a meadow, count its little black hairs,
if the field is a flag, count its violent stars.
Renounce all forms of sex unless it’s with a landscape.

Second Miracle

A blue snow arrives in a meaningless landscape.
It isn’t snow, it is a cloud of letters. Bloodhounds
pursue the letters through the whitening fields.
To kill something, say its name. No new sentences,
a gunshot remarks from the edge of the forest.

Third Miracle

The letters call into the copse without entering.
Something stumbles out with the body of a stag
and the head of a stag. The letters bring it down
by the neck. Each hurt breath is a comma.
The pack of letters buries it in its name.

Fourth Miracle

Grief’s wayward angel cries into the five cups.
I drink and drink and wait for it to turn back
into blood. At the bottom of the cup is a boy,
at the bottom of the boy is a white wind.
Do not think there’s such a thing as allegory.

Fifth Miracle

In my pain crown I hold utterly still as gold
piano wires arrow into the back of my eyes.
Black specks on the field are horses or birds.
Scale does not hold here. Even in the dark
I can see the three suns, hovering.

Sixth Miracle

Three suns canceled out by the Southern Cross.
A body dies on top of a second body, a landscape
falls into another landscape. Three suns settle
on the peaks and triangulate a signal to reach
the mysterious white plane circling the city.

Seventh Miracle

The white plane never lands, it holds an approach
pattern until the map stops making sense.
Nothing ever disappears, never really. Stare
at the multiplying sun, lens flare, sundog.
A layer of planes marks a new geological time.

Eighth Miracle

A cloud drifts and stalls over the city,
goes up in flames. Wild white turbines
blow the cloud around the perimeter.
Difference can’t hold across a medium.
Soon the city takes fire too.

Ninth Miracle

A bomb dropped and the landscape grew around it.
Now the city exists in two states. There is the city
and its blast radius of suburbs, city and uncertainty.
Divide the measurement from the explosion,
level everything back into a flat white plane.

Zack Anderson holds an MFA from the University of Notre Dame, where he worked for Action Books, and an MA from the University of Wyoming. He teaches English in Denver and writes for American Microreviews and Interviews.