Fire Hazard

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