Don't Believe What the Fire Told You
We see holes burned in the sky where a clear star hung only yesterday.
We use salamander as a verb. We watch smoke hover over grass, mingled
with dirty light from outer space. We think we hear Mercury’s feathered
feet, the papery sound of wings. We think he fled into a rainless cloud.
We see bursts of chimney swifts spiral toward the sun, then evaporate.
We see towers and chimneys collapse in the flames. We watch ash motes
snow through red light. Clouds of birds turn to crude letters, a caption
for a photograph of a woman doubled over, her hands over her eyes.
From her mouth, a cry like Jupiter’s red bruise. We ask each other:
How did Joan of Arc’s heart survive? Was it asbestos? Was it carved
from something hard and red, like jasper? What kind of heart does
God carve for His pet? Fire slandered her heart. We guess her heart
salamandered through the fire. Maybe, we say, God gave Joan an
igneous heart, an ignoble heart, a magmatic heart. Maybe God gave
Joan a magnetic heart. We dig through the crust of the earth
looking for her sizzling heart. Then, we remember her heart
got thrown in the river. We remember she signed her name
with an X. She became a constellation. She signs her name
in light: Xe for Xenon. We watch the sky now. We know
when she gets homesick, she comes back to earth as a
falling star, dazzling with its bridal train of flames.
Mirror, Candle, Horse
We break a mirror. We break
a horse. We light a candle
with a burning twig.
Many stars, born in pairs.
Found with radio waves
aimed — at the Perseus Cloud?
At Pegasus? We forget.
The sun’s twin died. Who knows
when it burned out. You pulled
the string of the back porch light,
dead moths softening the glow
of the globe. I balanced on a table
while pulling the string on the bed-
room light upstairs, fell, landed hard,
cut my face. If wishes were horses?
If wishes bloomed open with blown-out
candles? If mirrors recorded things
we say in the middle of the night
and saved it for later? If fire and herds
never stopped moving? Okay! When
I speak, I’m everyone’s sister. When
I speak, I shine like a red horse after
it’s run for miles. Like a big flame on
a cheap candle. Like a lost hand mirror
shining in the ruby wilderness.
Grievance Letter
I know an inkmaker who lives outside the city. He melts guns in acid to make red ink. He says, all good ink contains iron, like blood. Even yellow ink. He can't show me how he makes blue ink. Trade secret.
Clear water tells a story, he says. Cloudy water, too. I blink a drip of red from a dropper into a glass of water. It spreads, dyes the water pinkish. He says, ink runs at the same pace as blood.
He told me, in magic, dove's blood ink counteracts bat's blood. Neither kind
is made with real blood. That sounds true. Dragon's blood ink is made with resin.
Blood and old-fashioned ink have the same ratio of iron.
I know that much.
Signing in blood sounds like you're making a pact with the devil, but Jesus talked about writing covenants in blood. I fill my pen, write the story out till it turns sideways and the ink runs. I write the story down till the ink bleeds and the crinkly paper catches on fire.
I never write with disappearing ink. I'm not a spy, or a dressmaker, or a sneak. Anyway, the inkmaker says it's creepy.
Ink runs. Blood runs. The sun flares. The moon marbles its way across the horizon. I try to write this story down from memory. The ink is too salty. The ink is too cloudy. It's too sticky. I place my fingers on my closed eyes. I leave ink on my lids, like a druid.
I promise, he says, all letters have blood in them. And so do the words. Even ones spoken out loud, floating on breath.
Turnskin
To apprehend a jar, to measure a cry
To minuet in blood
To turn a hunter’s whistling inside out
To sleek a cloud, to skin a cloud
To seek mineral blood and snowcap
To understand the chatter of one animal skin to another
To turn a perfect corner not a perfect cartwheel
To find the witch cattery in the forest
To find the ancient dog paw dangling from the doorknob
To paw, to hoove, to foot, to handle
To undermine one’s own skin
To skim off one’s skein
To yellow the eyeball, to diamondshape the pupil
To snake, to cat, to dogwolf oneself,
To knuckle under, to own paws
To skin-fetch, teeth itch, vomit black dog cloud, grow from mouth out
To grow muzzly, to tender the grass, to rod and cone the eyes
To black and white the eyes, cloud the eyes, cloud the skin
To undermine the ribs, breathe the ribs, crouch the haunch
To tabby the skin, fur the stripes, measure distance with whisker
To chew brightness, break feathers, night the night
To unname light, to breathe light, to roll sandy and filthy
To smell rot, lick rot, go by no name
To break rabbits, cur the fur, blood up the blood
To fur up brown, fur up brindle, fur up red, fur up yellow
To blunder, see with eyes dark yellow ringed red
To see blacklight, to smell storm, to smell sickness brewing in hive
To smell rocks, read grass, groke the fox at trash eating trash
To shoulder and haunch, feel stringy, feet fast thrash
To pawprint, paw rat dead, jaw hard, bite stringy and bloody
To work bright legs, to roam, to scratch
To use bright feet not speech
To smell root hairs, worms, to dig and paw
To pawn speech for speed, to run down streets, pebbly on paws
To break possum, smell heat, dig thatchy grass
To smell dawn, to turn to whine, to turn, to turn back to growl at morning
To sniff morning to bark at morning to long for feral to push back morning
To smell small birds waking, dusty wings shaking off mites as they fly
To wish to bite dawn to maul dawn and to not turn back
To unlearn fur, to lose piebald, to grow peachy, to spine up, to stop haunching
To miss curling up at the twist and turn of roots, soon
To numb, to throw spring far, to long for lost jars in hidden rivers
To pivot, to reknuckle, to twitch digits
To sadden at having hands
To backward, to repupil, to flatten
To charade backwards, to cease hounding
To lose gleams, swims in rivers, flat black pupils now
To go flat, taste water, tastes blank, smell air gone blank
To myrrh the head, fill the head with alphabet
To renanny manners, to unpause talk
To rout the snouty instincts
To sluice furless body in brackish backyard water
To peeve and fever, to grow a chin back, grow sapien
To hem the human, hem it in, turn the stitch and grieve it
To make the skin crawl, to crawl back into the skin
Frances, Frances, Francine
At landfall, Frances was a Category 2. Frances killed 49 people in Florida,
spawned dozens of tornadoes a dozen years before Frances, a cat not named for the storm, arrived on the block. Our cat now, first spotted dragging a bag of McDonald's across the street. Caged in the back seat of the car, she shared
all her grief, hating travel more than the strife on the street, the chase-off
of jowly toms and tabby tibs. Watching Francine — the storm — approach,
we packed the cat next to bug-out bags, towels, snacks. We drove northwest, past the shacks selling boudin and cracklings. We tried to listen to the rain,
the crying and the scratching, as one long, necessary song. In a cheap hotel
in Shreveport, the cat stuffed herself behind the flimsy bed. Not even food,
her greatest joy, could lure her out. We'd fled, watched the storm on our phones, heeding a fortune cookie: follow instincts when making decisions.
Stay, get locked in. Leave, locked out. Pick your shelter. Know your place.
Francine sounded like a homewrecker. What's in a name? Rain and only rain.
Three Stars Each
When did the dead forget how
to get to Corvus, the stars also
known as the tortoise, the egret,
the Vermillion Bird of the South?
Spirits follow the brightest light
they sense without eyes. Shine
to shine, trapped in glamor.
Most ghosts go to Vegas,
the Neon Boneyard,
drink quicksilver, watch
rust eating the steel of the
drive-through wedding chapel,
suck on argon, krypton and xenon,
ice cubes at the bottom of a scotch.
The dead think they’ve cut
themselves on the sharp-edged S
of STARDUST, though they don’t
have blood or skin. It’s where they argue
whether Binion’s red and gold bulb-
studded horseshoe would make
a better necklace or a crown.
They confuse their own light
with purring gas in glass tubing.
They forget they shouldn’t be owned
by the glow of the showy bulbs throwing
rainbows, fire grids exploding
waves of shine, the tacks and screws
holding it all together, the heat and the glare,
the little dagger in the word
diamanté.
Copyright © 2025 Otis Nebula Press. All rights reserved.
Stefene Russell is an MFA candidate in poetry at the University of New Orleans, a managing editor at Bayou Magazine, and a New Orleans Poetry Festival board member. She’s also an unrepentant fan of the British paranormal show “Help! My House is Haunted.”