Emily Rosko

Threat Cycle

Fires in auburn autumn,
the smoke stiffened our lungs
so that singing became difficult.

The moon barely showed
us our faces in the blot
of night, or lasted through

dawn’s thickness. Once,
the villages in the woods
were a sanctuary, each house

could be trusted. Now the men
go around setting torch
to ground, and the gun-spark

of their missed shots burns
black the rock and then
turns the field to flame.

The pines, alive last season
with beetles, become
pyre. Land deskinned.

Mountain coyotes ate
the ghosts became the new
ghosts. We thin

ashened, our hair matted.
They say the bread
will be scarce. We hear

the streams and soil are to
be poisoned to uproot us.
So many good creatures

have disappeared from earth.
So many new knocks
to start us from our doors.

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Emily Rosko is the author of two award-winning poetry collections, Prop Rockery (University of Akron Press, 2012) and Raw Goods Inventory (University of Iowa Press, 2006). Additionally, she is the editor of A Broken Thing: Poets on the Line (University of Iowa Press, 2011). Her poems have been published in AGNI, Antioch Review, Beloit Poetry Journal, Denver Quarterly, Laurel Review, New Orleans Review and Pleiades, among others. She earned a MFA at Cornell and PhD in Literature and Creative Writing at the University of Missouri. She is associate professor of English at the College of Charleston and the poetry editor for Crazyhorse.