Good Fire
To take back the land is to poem the de-territorialized we; to poem map (we) as insurgent, unconquered, owed to what is lost, what must be protected, and always what is shared; to harvest without accumulation, again, again.
—Zaina Alsous
write what you know: I know cicadas swallowed by smoke. horizon choked by car exhaust, bitter raincloud. butterfly wings, halved by the heat and highways. lullaby in grasses straining to hush the uproar from the waterside. I know from Yurok, Karuk, Hupa, Miwok, Chumash relatives: fire licks the carcass clean. moss and acorns soothe a blaze’s hungry belly, whet her all-consuming eyeteeth, welcome slumber when she is satisfied. beneath the milkweed root, cactus rot: alkaline kaleidoscope, world of new bones. each layer of life-giving a heavy clot ready for bloom. I thumb parched bark from the pine in my backyard. shed the years she has thirsted in this drought. upstate, the Klamath boils away beneath a muddy sun. suffocated by the lake’s severed body, suckerfish skim the surface. their stiff enamel eyes dried up on arroyo bank. all that remains: deboned ecosystem, corpse-black wash of trees divvied in 1906 to quench greedy soil, avocado trees, greenery too lush for desert-scape. oh, let her burn softly. let the lake regain her scattered limbs. there is sweetness in the scorching. gentle unshelling. let those who have known this place reach the clear water and drink
First published in Youth to the People






The poem feels like someone trying to hold the beauty and the damage of the land in the same breath.
There’s a real ache in the images burned wings, boiling water, fish drying on the banks like forgotten memories.
What struck me most is how the poem doesn’t shy away from the destruction but still insists on the possibility of renewal.
The way fire is described as something that cleans and also wounds feels honest, not romanticized.
You can sense the speaker’s connection to the land through the tribal names, like a thread of memory running underneath everything.
The dried‑out suckerfish hit me hardest they feel like a symbol of how far things have been pushed.
I love how the poem leans into the idea that healing isn’t soft; it’s a kind of breaking open.
There’s a quiet hope in the wish for the lake to gather itself again, like a body trying to remember how to live.
The poem carries this longing for balance, for letting the land breathe the way it once did.
By the end, it feels like a prayer for restoration one spoken by someone who loves the land enough to tell the truth about it.
Beautiful hommage to the West Coast. I see California, Oregon, dry summers and fire season, waters as commodity just like the trees, divvied up to serve a purpose not their own.