Joanne Lowery’s poems have appeared in many literary magazines, including Birmingham Poetry Review, Eclipse, Smartish Pace, Cimarron Review, roger, Atlanta Review, and Poetry East. Her collection Call Me Misfit won the 2009 Frank Cat Poetry Prize. Read a review here. She lives in Michigan.

Setting the World on Fire

As an experiment I thought I’d toss a match
into the wintry air and see if I could prove Edward Teller
true about the three-in-a-million chance
of igniting earth’s atmosphere. No one knew
what his small bomb would do. I was newborn
for Hiroshima, and Nagasaki was another summer’s day.
People fell like matchsticks while I napped,
my breath trying to be human, fingers grasping,
unburied by ash far from Pompeii. Risk-taking
became the basis of a century we have left behind.
In this new one oxygen burns only
when we tell it to. So this dark morning
with scientists busy in their labs,
I remove my gloves and hush the wind.
On the east side of town, limited success
rolls itself into a ball inching skyward.

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Offensive Language

Prohibited by the sign on the beach along with grills,
glass, dogs, and alcohol are the best words
to describe the shore now that it’s November:
son-of-a-bitches large and small gone home,
frigging leaves blown from bastard oaks
and mother maples by wind colder than asshole or cock.
Goddamn how beautifully the first
fucking snowflakes violate the sand.

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Chevy Shadow

An old Chevy station wagon
is headed straight for a black cloud
of plastic garbage bag
floating across the right lane.

The car sags, swallows.
For a moment the bag disappears.

Then there it is again,
reconfigured and billowing.

Under the car all is well:
a dark rectangle fits the chassis,
and the exhaust pipe rides shotgun
above its twin tail.