Michael Mackin O'Mara
  • Poems
    • A Brief History in Pink
    • a poem (Ars Poetica)
    • the boy who could fly
    • the conflagration
    • Dissertation
    • Dreams in Black & White
    • For the Dear One
    • Goya, The Third of May
    • Interrogation Survival Techniques circa 1988
    • In the South Pacific
    • In Your Global Warming Dream
    • The Irish Goodbye
    • The Lost Canoe
    • Marisol
    • Night Prayers to Guadalupe
    • On These Nights
    • Poem at the End of the World
    • The Scrutinies
    • The Smallest Color
  • GRAPHIC ARTS
    • Declining Nudes
    • Lily Pads on Acid
    • Polar Series
    • Torso Studies
    • Who Do You Love
  • PHOTOGRAPHY
    • Outback
    • Skins
    • Splintered
    • Walk About Colors
  • Contact
Picture
Pudding Magazine #69
the conflagration of our inheritance
we clean
 
we clean to bare walls and floors
rooms elongate like feral cats
 
heirlooms bonfired on a dead lawn                                            
we add faux condolences                            
drive truckloads through a narrow jamb   
the dancing fire hesitates
 
dreams, nightmares, bastard spawn of
T.V. and movie soundtracks
resold to insomniacs all the toss-turn night
WalpurgisNacht rattles our heads
 
we wild
 
smoldering cushions burst and flow   
dolls cleansed of their defilements  
contort in their meltings   
 
journals, albums, memoirs              curl
orange and red - ringlets to ashen flight
 
we clean
till what remains
won't bleach or burn
 
we dance, inviolate charwomen
Jeanne d'Arcs in the purifying flames
 
till our bones are soot, our blackened lungs
remnants of screaming embers,
Pompeians fired in Vesuvian kilns
we, nightingales; we, maids of heaven
 
how the Ancients honored us
in tapestries set before a queen, in the nights'
blooming, in a feathered voice
 
— Yes, we cry, Yes,
that's how we learned
to curse and sing
 
we clean…

@minwpb


  • Poems
    • A Brief History in Pink
    • a poem (Ars Poetica)
    • the boy who could fly
    • the conflagration
    • Dissertation
    • Dreams in Black & White
    • For the Dear One
    • Goya, The Third of May
    • Interrogation Survival Techniques circa 1988
    • In the South Pacific
    • In Your Global Warming Dream
    • The Irish Goodbye
    • The Lost Canoe
    • Marisol
    • Night Prayers to Guadalupe
    • On These Nights
    • Poem at the End of the World
    • The Scrutinies
    • The Smallest Color
  • GRAPHIC ARTS
    • Declining Nudes
    • Lily Pads on Acid
    • Polar Series
    • Torso Studies
    • Who Do You Love
  • PHOTOGRAPHY
    • Outback
    • Skins
    • Splintered
    • Walk About Colors
  • Contact