after the fire
we poked through ash with shovels & sticks,
probed the grass for heat & bones as if
the bonfire hadn't devoured everything
we threw at it, drunk as we were on grape
kool-aid & everclear or boone's farm
strawberry hill & when the pallets & stumps
& two-by-fours popped & crackled beneath
the october missouri sky we laughed & hooted
& lurched to kfmz blasting on too many boomboxes
while the flames leapt higher & when stevie said
he had reserves the following weekend we made
him chug the rest of sarah's vodka & when he puked
we stuck his head under the water pump until he
came up laughing, hair slick, face red, & two years
later he was dead in the kuwaiti desert & no one
remembered how we laughed when he walked still drunk
into a tree that next morning, the ash & our sleeping
bags losing warmth under the pale mid-morning sun