An electrician came
to look behind the fridge-freezer
and said it was a fire hazard.
The wiring wasn’t done correctly.
For ten years I’ve been living in this flat
and the whole time there it was –
the fire hazard
waiting right in front of me.
And for forty years I’ve been living
in this world
with fire hazards everywhere.
Most of the rooms around here
don’t have windows
to escape from
and jump out of any window
and you simply land face-flat
in dry kindling anyway.
The floors are a fire hazard.
The walls are a fire hazard.
That line that separates
the land from the sky
is really a wire leading to a box of TNT.
The whole place is ready to blow.
I look at the moon
out the window at night,
casting faint light across the trees
in the park.
Come the morning
we’ll hear cries of abandon
from the swings and slides;
the quickening breath
of the crackling asphalt.
Joshua Seigal
