"Wildfire Cousins" by Samantha Gardner

Wildfire Cousins

The world cawed that Friday evening.
That baked the sun a Mars glow.
Pedantic twentyish businessmen and loyal wives
Held hands around the burst of telephone and fire truck screams
And who were we?
On the balcony
The world sank like a magician’s fraught trick.
Cigarette smoke got pulled in, sucked, and joined its wildfire cousins in the black heaven.
God is a Labrador today
All the children pine
While he shushes Sunset Boulevard and Mulholland
And we just sit in
Beverlywood, with drooping heads
The reds fall to the bushes,
And Meredith cries,
In the cool of January,
The flames reap with Santa Ana scythes.

Samantha Gardner

Samantha Gardner is a young writer based in Los Angeles. She is a student of Brendan Constantine and a graduate of the Young Women's Leadership Institute Creative Writing pre-college program at Barnard College. Her work can be found in the Windward School Literary Magazine and as a recipient of the national Eber Wein's Honors Poetry Prize 2023 for her poem "I Wish I Lived in the City".

Headshot: Daniel Elbaz

Photo Credit: Staff