Once Fire, by Laurel Benjamin

Empress of the Blues, by Romare Bearden (USA) 1974

Once Fire 
 
Her skirt an abstract painting of canary 
yellow, her nose separating from her face 
the way tectonic plates smolder 
early in a dry earthquake morning. 
Singer with the jazz combo, her riotous 
pheasant stance hypnotizes the room, 
how Dante could have taken her as his Beatrice 
if he’d written to-date. And as much as 
I overhear the breeze of compliments 
by way of patrons, I wonder 
if my boyfriend thinks she’s too loud,
his cousin from Chicago belting it out
at this San Francisco club. I still heard 
tugboats in my ears from earlier 
and the foghorn late last night that entered 
his parent’s basement where I stayed. 
Nothing survives if it doesn’t smolder. I heard it 
the way I saw colours, her voice unfurled, 
bouquet theme of what was once fire. ​

Laurel Benjamin

Laurel Benjamin is a San Francisco Bay Area native, where she invented a secret language with her brother. She has work in Lily Poetry Review, Burningword, Eunoia, Glassworks, South Florida Poetry Journal, Fourth River. Affiliated with the Bay Area Women’s Poetry Salon and Ekphrastic Writers, she holds an MFA from Mills College. She is a reader for Common Ground Review and has featured in the Lily Poetry Review Salon.