Jeremy Michael Reed

Paradise

You died the same season your hometown burned.

It rained for weeks, the pavement black with wet.

Your dogs howled every time I walked in the door.

Too many symbols, you’d say. I think we’re getting it
already.

               On the news, I saw the pictures of Paradise:
each house turned to whistling ash.

                                                            A friend told me once
how vocal chords vibrate when words are read silently.

When I typed “how vocal chords,” autocorrect made “vocal”
into “I am.” I’m not sure how.

                                                    Too many again, you’d say.

When I see the pictures, each window framed in flame,
each peak to home ensconced in red orange billowing,
taken down to beam skeleton, I think of your poem,
of every road laid out in golden sunlight, in honey,
and I wonder if this isn’t a different kind of danger:
to remember—

                                                                          Let’s
not read too much into what you said that last day;
let’s not see Paradise as only flame. Let’s understand
the fire as one part of a history of harvest, melons, grapes.

Let’s see how you stood by the car longer than I expected
the same simple way you used to turn in your office chair
at my knock.

                                           I hesitate over this poem,
reading back line by line, answering what you didn’t
have to ask that day by the drive.

                                                         I am. I am.

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Jeremy Michael Reed holds a Ph.D. in English and Creative Writing from the University of Tennessee, where he was editor-in-chief of Grist: A Journal of the Literary Arts and assistant to Joy Harjo. His poems and essays are published in Still: The Journal, Valparaiso Poetry Review, Western Humanities Review and elsewhere. He is an associate editor for Sundress Publications and an assistant professor of English for Westminster College in Fulton, MO.