Don't Leave Hungry: Fifty Years of Southern Poetry Review

Desire

N AT H A L I E F. A N D E R S O N Desire We drove out to the city of the dead where he showed me how the fire blazed through. You can trace its path over the flagstones, up the black brick steps still braced by iron rails and pickets, out onto the cold slab of the foundations. The heavy trees stand charred clean, burnished. A palm crests the hill, its fronds crisped to stubs, its fat bulk bronzed to a pineapple finial, announcing hospitality. No rule to it— how it eats one house and spares another, skipping this tiled roof and that stained window. A small-boned cat might kindle in a breath, but here he comes, mewing for his supper, and here is a widow, come to feed him. So he said to me, now you’ve seen it. Would you still wake the dragon? Around us the scorched earth cracked its hoard, every rise bright with basket-of-gold, hyacinth, lapis, pearl. Ash lit my tongue. God forgive me, I said yes. 190 ❚ The 1990s ...