CAROL EDWARDS
★ ★ ★ ★
POETRY
Image by Frankie Lopez
48 Days
For weeks we’ve waited.
We watch the monsoon clouds gather over the city,
over the mountain.
We smell distant damp dirt and creosote.
The sky turns charcoal gray, burdened with its load.
The mountain smokes in the day, turns molten at night.
A bird pants under the oven sun, beak wide open.
A pack rat cows in a shaded corner, concrete hot enough
to bake its feet.
Bolted down chairs sizzle through thin clothes.
Red-rimmed ribbons sink down the mountain sides, the canyon floors.
Thunder rumbles like a trash barrel rolled to the curb.
The whole desert waits for the drops to fall,
for the lumbering boulders to crack.
The earth splits its mouth, tongue of spines and sand and ash:
the wildfire must be put out.
Carol Edwards is a northern California native transplanted to southern Arizona. She grew up reading fantasy and classic novels, climbing trees, and acquiring frequent grass stains. She currently enjoys a coffee addiction and raising her succulent army. Her poetry has been published in numerous anthologies, periodicals, and online magazines/blogs, including Space & Time, Uproar Literary Blog, Southern Arizona Press, White Stag Publishing, The Post Grad Journal, Written Tales, and is forthcoming in Black Spot Books. Her debut poetry collection, The World Eats Love, released on April 25, 2023 from The Ravens Quoth Press. Follow her on IG @practicallypoetical, Twitter/FB @practicallypoet
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