Geoff Anderson
Gasps for breath had woken me,
the heater unable to exhale:
I was convinced it was
the furnace that had died,
not a cardinal,
snarled in the blower,
a poke of red feathers
between fan blades.
Each was stubborn
as hair in my wife's brush;
the more I pulled away,
the more I thought of being
lodged in the chest's
unforgiving chambers:
capacitor, ignitor,
organs sealed with a screw.
For his misjudgment,
was the punishment swift
or drawn out, the way
an artery can burst
so suddenly or
become strangled
unnoticed; if I couldn't
repent, what would
I prefer? The fires
as they catch again
run their veins through
the sinews of my house,
their heartless
plumes of flame.