Last January, L.A. burned. In the month you were born: dimple-dapper. The sky rimmed blood-moon. Lottery ticket shavings in the dusty gutter. Each step through honeysuckle, through June gloom, another light blinks over the Pacific. At night, outside the window, rustling in the manzanita. While inside, the smokestack spreads, the other kind of thinking. I dug my fingers into the wet earth; a soft bruise, blooming & fading. The dry crackle of wind through floss silk in the park. While in the foothills, fire rises, a veil of wood-smoke drifts over the valley. The sky carves out a darker night. I’m sitting on the roof of my apartment building: sweet yet sad, thinking of Illinois. How some will leave. Some will fall. Others will burn-out, waiting.
Author Bio: Bryce Berkowitz’s work has appeared or is forthcoming in Best New Poets 2017, Ninth Letter, Third Coast, Passages North, The Pinch, Sugar House Review, Hobart, Barrow Street, Permafrost, Eleven Eleven, Tampa Review, Hawai’i Pacific Review, The Laurel Review, The Southampton Review, The Fourth River, and others.
