by Gibson Fay-LeBlanc

After a quiet flash: a second sun
rose and fell and flattened four square miles —

half–grown potatoes cooked in the earth,
odd–shaped shadows burned on stones —

twelve days later,
                     wildflowers would overtake
the epicenter’s remains.
                                  Sickle–senna

ruled next to goosefoot and yellow–eyed
bluets; Spanish bayonets and morning glories
grew near hairy–fruited bean.  Broad green
with mealy–white undersides, sword–like
leaves, stubby white rays, climbing vines,
pea–flowers enclosed in burs with hooked spikes:

a field stood swaying, where houses had been.
Neck–high wildflowers — where houses had been.

                       — after John Hersey’s “Hiroshima”

by Gibson Fay-LeBlanc

She led me in among the voiceless things.
A long hallway, of course, and locked doors.
She asked me to describe their pins and springs.

Some glittered, some were bone; others clung
to jambs on chains: padlocks of flesh, of coral.
She led me quietly, with cunning, and sang

wordlessly, asked of the contents and tongues
she heard shifting behind the veins of mortar.
I asked her what she knew of hidden things.

I said, The mechanisms are mystifying,
the tumblers keyless: they’re best left unforced.
She asked me to describe a latch, a spring.

I said, This vault’s old, see the patterning
on the lock?  A child’s scratchings: a hex to ward
off those led in among the voiceless things.

And she: It’s just a door, push it, let it spring —
how else will you know what’s in there, so long stored?
I let her in among my voiceless things —
pins in my hands, I began remembering.

by Simon Pettet

Two oranges,  incense,  a little fire water

Some tastefully–wilted flowers,

A perpetually shining bowl

Two cups