Local woman longs for shelter after proverbial wind totals her car.

Colorado smells like burnt sage
cleansing and chasing bad spirits away
Arizona smells like burnt sage
cleansing and chasing, cleansing
Arizona smells like burnt rubber
and hospital rooms and flesh to ash

Colorado smells like fresh sky
filling lungs and giving legs strength
Colorado smells like cold snow
brisk and refreshing, stealing strength
Nevada smells like dust

Nevada smells like hot dust, sick wind, dirt
Nevada smells like meth, decay, dirty money
Nevada smells like nuclear waste, rotting carp

Nevada smells like suffocated babies
Oregon smells like trees
Oregon smells like waterfalls and ice
slipping between books and lectures

Oregon smells like sex and whiskey
Oregon smells like old houses that creak
when toe tips scrape across late nights
Oregon smells like anger and apathy
and the bottom of a pool, drowning

Oregon smells like escape from dust
Oregon smells like, no don't go back
Washington smells like the ocean
salty and warm on the skin

Washington smells like aloe vera
after a blistering sun burn
Washington smells like tears
turned into torrents of giggles
Washington smells like very cheap beer

Washington smells like delinquent nights
sneaking from room to room, all smiles
Washington smells like poetry and wine
Washington smells like Excel documents

Washington smells like laughing children
Washington smells like a time machine
oiled and ready to grant the only wish
Washington smells like cigarettes and soap
clinging to tshirts and jackets and scarves

Washington smells like an abundance of apologies,
unnecessary and ultimately amusing
Washington smells like graciousness
Washington smells like home

Given to loss; a wound in the sky

The Angel: androgynous, amoral, apathetic, alight
with the dim memory of what once was and will
never come to pass. Thrown from the white walls into

........................................................................................outer darkness?

No; bourn down by the winds of ruin to that place
of desperation, the stage for the epic of man which
sparked his war. Stripped of grandeur and authority,
left to his wanderlust, burt and broken, a shell.

The Fallen: feeble, flaking, frightened, fleeing
a legacy of fated flaws, intrusive memories of smoke
and the dismemberment of brother and sisters
whose love shone to brightly, the Sun in shadow.

Emily, 162 words

The ashes scatter across the once leavened land. Empty trees hung their harrowed arms beneath an ocean of smoke, drowned small animals and thickened Emily's pale skin. She moaned at the bottom of it, ocean animals swayed into vermin holes around her and she peered orb-eyed at the ozone breaking above her in orange and blue and gray light. Her eyes had glazed over, a monotone affect like *, vivid blue ain't so blue. The alarm sounded, and she broke through, eyes sparked life again and she rose to her feet, galloped toward the slaughterhouse before she could think. Four small children, androgynous, dressed in overalls, ran at her, sapphire gems in hand. Before she could open her thin cracked lips to warn them, the sensors triggered the tiny missiles that pulled them into the quarry. Emily fell to the ground, hit her knees on some sharp black rocks without wincing. Her * silence lingered as she slowly, uncertainly, turned to ash.

*anemic, blanched, cadaverous, colorless, ghastly, gray, leaden, pale, pallid, pasty, sallow, wan, white, depression, downheartedness, dumps, eyes, heaviness of heart, lowness, low spirits, melancholy, peepers, postpartum depression

copter

Twin copter leaves spiral
slowly to the sidewalk
settling in an uneven seam
across the street from a
grade school leavened by
the sounding vibrations
of joy generated by children
like little mirth furnaces.