Even with the lake in sight,
the reeds splinter dry, fire-prone as torches
crowded in the sand.
A siren catches wind, lowing through the fields,
thickened by the heat the way
light amplifies through glass.
In this town, there are four sirens:
twelve o'clock, five o'clock, funnel clouds,
and the one we hear now: fire,
the one that calls us children outside
to crush the grass, lay belly up
to watch the soot drift by—
white for hay, black for trash blown burning
from its drum—passing overhead,
we guess shapes swirling in the smoke.
This is not so unlike last July’s disaster drill:
they painted our faces red,
practiced cinching us to boards,
securing our broken spines,
feigning the worst catastrophe
this town has ever seen.
They left us in the dirt, suffering in the heat,
forgetting we needed to be saved,
the siren cutting everything,
ants swarming our sugar-smeared skin—
be good and play dead, we were told,
be good and play dead.
Manda Frederick has previously published poetry in the Sierra Nevada Review, Stirring, Iron Horse Literary Review, The Monarch Review, Muse & Stone, The Way North: Upper Peninsula Collected New Works, Vine Leaves Literary Magazine, the 2011 Press 53 Open Awards Anthology, The Cancer Poetry Project Anthology, Love Notes: An Anthology of Romantic Poetry, MOTIF Anthology: Water, and the Delmara Review.
She holds an MFA in creative writing from the Inland Northwest Center for Writers and an MA in literary theory from Western Washington University. She currently serves as the Managing Editor for a book-publishing company in the tech industry and resides in Philadelphia, PA.