by Claudia Putnam
Firebirds
In my lifetime, in this decade,
summer was wildflowers, high
elevation hikes, travertine lakes,
kayaks, fish. During heat waves,
worse each year, still refuge
in the high country, fresh cool
air, marmots, hawks, moose.
You sweat up there now, the air
a cluster of smut. Birds never
seen before flocking to the tarns,
gulping, splashing, frantic,
before dying, all of them, from
what they’ve been flying through.
5 Earthquake
This age, these men doomed
to destruction via plate tectonics,
lateral glides
subductions
thrusts.
By the ancients it was said:
a doom inevitable, it could
only be delayed:
the ultimate sacrifice:
your heart burnt, my skin
flayed.
Wisdom from a land
riddled by quakes,
ridden by volcanoes—
already jaguars,
hurricanes,
fire, and flood
had destroyed
the ancestors, whatever
walked the earth before.
Just the other night, a small
earthquake woke us, the dog.
Low-level, remarkable only
because they don’t happen here.
Our foam mattress floating
above the mantle, reclining
on intestines stretching,
rumbling to be fed.
Claudia Putnam lives in western Colorado. Her poems appear in Iron Horse, South Dakota Review, EcoTheo Collective, Rattle, and elsewhere. Her debut collection, The Land of Stone and River, won the Moon City Poetry prize and was recently reviewed by Good River Review. A short memoir, Double Negative, won the Split/Lip Press CNF chapbook prize and made the 2022 CLMP nonfiction roundup. The George Bennett Fellowship at Phillips Exeter Academy is among her residency awards.