White Heat
Joan McNerney
 

​This dry moment
we lay in sweat beds.
 
Limp flowers turned
into themselves.
 
Lightning scorches
skies with hot zigzags.
 
Will it ever rain, when
will cicadas be silent?
 
Memories of a white room
burning pains . . . shunts, stains.
 
A bottle bursts filling the
sidewalk with rancid beer.
 
Throat of bird
swollen, screaming.