smoke stung our nostrils. billowed over houses on rockwood. we knew it as the house a few blocks down. a listing like a portrait. retrenched on google. white siding, a tall stone chimney. the turn at whitney, left, where we would see him sometimes in a sweaty undershirt, bending over pale hydrangeas, digging out pernicious weeds. did he touch a cigarette to synthetic? a single spark igniting. curtains cabinets furniture. the hot cloud pawing through fusty hallways. up cluttered stairwells. black smoke charring faded floral wallpaper. they were old, we didn’t know them. call it failure of occupation. the grass untamed. trackless. the vines that willed a wall. call it failure of attention. the quiet smoldering until engines trained their hoses.Kathleen Hellen’s debut collection Umberto’s Night won the poetry prize from Washington Writers’ Publishing House. She is the author of The Only Country Was the Color of My Skin, Meet Me at the Bottom, and two chapbooks. Featured on Poetry Daily and Verse Daily, Hellen’s work has appeared in Massachusetts Review, North American Review, Notre Dame Review, Poetry Northwest, Prairie Schooner, The Rumpus, Salamander, Witness, World Literature Today, and elsewhere. Awards include prizes from the H.O.W. Journal and Washington Square Review.
