Last Resort
Someone turns the kettle off.
Sets an alarm to silence. Neighbor,
are we showered? Are we dead yet?
My thoughts alive like elevators,
climb 12 stories and the romance of
being nothing is blistering.
I welcome paradise without wood.
Not brave, burning. Those Yarnell men
faced fire and it killed them. Besieged
by brush flame, they did not run
but deployed tents, zipped like Saturday,
like they would sleep this
one off, rise tomorrow not ash.
Jess Feldman’s poetry has appeared or is forthcoming in The Fourth River, Transom, Painted Bride Quarterly, Tuesday; An Art Project, and elsewhere. Her manuscript “Call it a Premonition” was chosen by Zachary Schomburg as winner of the 2015 BOAAT Winter Chapbook Competition. Jess is also a member of the band The Immaculate Corpses and lives in NYC. Follow her on Twitter at @jessfeldman.