Firepit
So adult one minute (sneaking
beer slugs), but just hours
after leading her dad’s buddy
into the woods she undialated
back to grade ten: on his cell
at dawn insisting he leave
his wife or she’ll cry rape—
whispering, in the gulping
quiet of refusal, “I got your cum!”
“We need books that affect us like a disaster, that grieve us deeply, like the death of someone we loved more than ourselves, like being banished into forests far from everyone, like a suicide. A book must be the axe for the frozen sea within us.”—Kafka (against the safe-space cancel culture pushed by anti-art bullies, left and right)