Fire in the Great Hawk Colony
- Fire in the Great Hawk Colony
It broke on an August day among the conifer hills of Moosalamoo, while you and I sat across the way unforgiving our faults and pride, stubbing cigarettes in the lawn. Only when we heard the sirens Doppler up a mile of switchbacks did we see the smoke loop above the dark spruce. You drove us up the hill K-turning out of every side road. You wanted to see a charred child's body, a parakeet's burnt beak thrust through cage bars, a doll's head with looseygoosey eye. All we found was an A-frame colony, a private pond, a red clay tennis court. We came from the shadows of branches and pine cones to green sunshine and a thicket by a bend in the road, raspberries still bursting. You hopped from the car and filled your shirt like they were the last fruit on earth. We ate. The engine idled. My tongue squnged in the sour mash. My teeth tightened, seeds in their gaps. I ground my molars and looked at you in the driver's seat, dropping redblack berries from fist to mouth, squinting up the hill for a sign of smoldering ash.
Jason Tandon’s poems have appeared in many journals, including Poet Lore, Euphony, the Bitter Oleander, Del Sol Review, Regarding Arts & Letters, Folio, Columbia Poetry Review, and Pavement Saw. He holds degrees in English from Middlebury College, and is completing his MFA at the University of New Hampshire where he teaches literature and composition. Since August 2005 he has served as an intern poetry editor at the Paris Review.
