Act One

By Emily Boyle

I already knew it was Orion's Belt

Stop trying to change the subject

It’s not romantic

It’s a funeral with fireworks

Lighting your grandma’s corpse on fire

Warming your hands with the flames

It’s Little Boy in the air

Exploding a planet away

Wars end with salient scars

Knives make good first impressions

Brighter is better

Brighter is remembered

Elvis Presley and Hitler

Suspended in the air

We remember

Spinning in Dad’s office chair

Light switch turned down

Desk lamp circling

Our Halley’s Comet

Metal shade so hot that it

Burned our fingers

Emily Boyle is a senior creative writing major at Interlochen Arts Academy. She currently lives in Beaver Island, Michigan. She has been published in Parallax and two editions of the Red Wheelbarrow, and will be published in The Noisy Island. She is a poetry editor for The Interlochen Review. She will be attending Kalamazoo College in the fall. Her favorite animal is, and forever will be, the capybara.     


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