Lewis Turco: Burning the News

The fire is eating
the paper. The child who drowned
is burned. Asia is in flames.
As he signs his great
bill, a minister of state chars
at the edges and curls
into smoke. The page rises,
glowing, over our neighbor’s
roof. In the kitchens
clocks turn, pages turn like gray wings,
slowly, over armchairs.
Another child drowns, a bill
is signed, and the pen blackens.
The smoke of Asia
drifts among the neighbors like mist.
It is a good day for burning.
The fire is eating the news.

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From Fearful Pleasures: The Complete Poems of Lewis Turco 1959-2007, Scottsdale, AZ: Star Cloud Press, 2007. ISBN 978-1-932842-19-7, cloth; ISBN 978-1-932842-20-3, paper. Also available in a Kindle edition from Amazon.

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Reprinted by permission of the author.

Lewis Turco