Lot's Wife

At first, my back to the epic.
Blue, sparked. Erosion

as a fever that begins
and reduces me to raw piles

of sand and vertebrae, long-grass and pupils,

told never to look back on the fire.

You made my mouth and I
suffered gravity, watching

bird shadows stretch and pull across pavement,

and the sky threaten
with blues and grays.

Screen-doors cracking,
the dusk buzzing;

the end is loud,
before and after.

My vision is eaten, gray-gauzed.
My palm, a salt-lick,

elements burning below
in a blue-hot blur of city;

I looked,
and now I burn with it,
cell by cell,

blind, unrepentant,

unrelenting.