Critique Please
Self-Immolation
11.18.2012
The fingers of fire curled around the car,
like hands cupping something fragile.
Her own gripped the steering wheel,
white from fear rather than heat.
She recalled once, while waiting for her latte,
glimpsing a newspaper still neatly folded
on its shelf that people, in some country
both irrelevant and inconceivable to herself,
were setting themselves on fire in protest.
Her lips were salty with sweat and blood,
and a roar swelled in her brain in time
with the heat that tugged at her woolen slacks
and polyblend sweater.
Even through the concussive mud,
the fire was beautiful; twisting into
buttressed cathedral arches outside
the spidery, starred windshield.
A very small, very reluctant part of her
thought she could now understand,
that she might now appreciate,
the cleansing clarity of fire.
The calico curtains of heat finally faded
behind the dark, oily smoke, and she knew
she had misunderstood the nature
of burning all along.
11.18.2012
The fingers of fire curled around the car,
like hands cupping something fragile.
Her own gripped the steering wheel,
white from fear rather than heat.
She recalled once, while waiting for her latte,
glimpsing a newspaper still neatly folded
on its shelf that people, in some country
both irrelevant and inconceivable to herself,
were setting themselves on fire in protest.
Her lips were salty with sweat and blood,
and a roar swelled in her brain in time
with the heat that tugged at her woolen slacks
and polyblend sweater.
Even through the concussive mud,
the fire was beautiful; twisting into
buttressed cathedral arches outside
the spidery, starred windshield.
A very small, very reluctant part of her
thought she could now understand,
that she might now appreciate,
the cleansing clarity of fire.
The calico curtains of heat finally faded
behind the dark, oily smoke, and she knew
she had misunderstood the nature
of burning all along.