Posts for June 7, 2026 (page 2)

Fuel:

To preserve the sweet syllabic kisses
of your love before you leave me alone
to dissolve against all this gruesome war,
I will have to seize the same unholy ways
of being a righteous fool. The flames of
discontent are a tender wilderness when
the residue of blue breath escapes from
perilous capture. Oh how many nights,
voices, books, years will be obscured by
the shifting heels of an unforgiving violet?
And what matters most in the Winter rain,
except for the silence?  Is it the sunshine
or bleached sky of a mourning language?
Or the swells of the buttered damage?
What keeps me kissing your darling lips?
Oh, how I rejoice with the waltzing wound
that frames my entire daring existence.

©️Winter Dawn Burns

The next time I saw her,
Her face was erased,
Features hardly discernable any more
And only with the succor of overdone mascara.  

“Too much concealer,” she explained
Over her customary produce,
Though the spinach was puree
And the strawberries were lesions,
White bearded and leaking.  

Her physician, it so happened
Was a 19th Century medicine man
In disguise, his covered wagon
Stashed away behind the new
Postmodern medical complex.
He had cures for migraines hangnails
Papercuts laugh lines boredom
A spouse’s wandering eyes—  

I never know where people go
Once they step through
The automatic glass doors.
Open and shut open and shut,
Watch them long enough and they become
Maws gnawing bodies whole,
Nothing but the city’s dark
Gaping gullet beyond.  

Her voice strained, squeaked.
Her mouth sunk back into the blur,
eyes, nose, ears, hair, all smudged
like ink from a bleeding
Pen. She pulled out her lipstick, drew
Lips where the lips should be,
A bit too puffy, perhaps, as though
injected with novocaine.  

Syllables strained through
The inflated lips, “I’m addicted,
I’ve lost myself.” And, with that,
She drifted from my register, beyond
My humble realm of influence,
Into a night that never spat her out
Again.

If he hadn’t said
(in front of the last-ditch therapist)
I love you but
I’m not in love with you –
You’re attractive but
I’m not attracted to you –

If I hadn’t heard
You are unlovable and
not only that
You are ugly and
even though my mama always said
Pretty is as pretty does

I believed every word.

Our silhouette still
Shapes carved in tarot cards
Reversed Strength, The Moon

And Imam and a Rabbi Walk in the Woods
אימאם ורב מטיילים ביער
إمام وحاخام يتجولان في الغابة

They don’t    speak
Why should    they
The trees  shading
the trail care  little
for what they may
say       &     no one
along   their    way
asks  to  see   their
hands        judging
who  has    redder
blood stains    The
trees   don’t  judge
Flags of  blue  and
green are left   be-
hind   Just   leaves
to  fly  in  the  soft 
breeze  displaying
but  the  colors  of
fall         They  and
their         dancing
branches      make 
the  only    sounds
No podcasters   or
snapchatters     or
youtubers          or
tik tokkers          to
pollute fresh    air
Even the      Torah
and Quran       are
not here           left
behind in     shuls
and         mosques
in the   holy cities
their      most pre-
sient points     not
read   just    book-
marked            for
another          day

                                                 Inspired by the cover 
                                                 of a High Holy Day
                                                 edition of the Pittsburgh
                                                 Jewish Chronicle pub-
                                                 lished many years ago.

I left before the dew fell.
I did not hear the goodbyes or witness the backclaps
or smile at the kindness of handshake hugs that come
after a long day of earnest, gentle celebration. I did not offer
any ‘you, be good now’ or ‘stay safe’ half-raised waves, but I
nodded well-wishes toward the booth folks and
the happy children and the hillside wild roses that bloom
whenever Heaven calls on them to lift…
lift their delicate modesty for all to see.
I drove home…carelessly…recklessly…free
around county curves, slowing only
to admire baled hay, abandoned porches, and the green,
overgrown wonder blanketing the mountains around me.
Then, the day was over, and like the others-
the dogs, the artists, the workers, I slept.

“A lifetime of cozy