Melissa Mutrux

Bright Star

Hurled headlong flaming from the ethereal sky

Imagine him,
                                falling,
feeling wind beneath arms
that are
just arms, feeling
the receding heat above,
receding too fast now
for apologies, for second chances,
too late to mourn
for things gone wrong,
to ask
for understanding — some stories
will always tell the same tale —
the land burning too,
golden and scorched and
unimpressed —

                              him, falling,
like lightning,
like a sacrifice for the fields,
cradled in the
now melting illusion
of the angelic, wings
as tattered as the sunlight
in the orchards below
where the fruit — pale and tired —
gazes heavenward,
waiting
for something to fall
                                from the sky.

The Rumor

Then, there came a day when you could no longer
watch the city, look at the eaten hills with
scoliotic streets, at the wooden, leprous
buildings that teemed and

multiplied until you saw sunlight slicing,
thin as lancet blades, at the smug white beards of
political men who would never care how
citizens lived, and

so, one night, in middle July, gave orders —
someone quiet no one would miss, who’d start the
cautery. No one could blame you. (These things, though
always get out.) You

dressed yourself in costume and left the bedroom,
walking out in Antium, off to sing the
Sack of Troy, of Ilium, and the burning
of the great city.

Melissa Multrux lives in San Diego, California. Recent work appears in Bear Flag Republic: Prose Poems and Poetics from California and San Diego Poetry Review. contact