Paradise is Burning

and the people in it are embers told by a wicked wind

too many gone to count                    can you count what is gone

said the wind to the flame

said the man to the neighbour

who lost his son when everything turned orange

            and even breath became tongues

            deep throating them

spell out       we will rise from the ashes    at vigil

for ashes

are ashes      and burnt things don’t rise    just crumble

it was a camp fire    said the start of the fire to the end

             but they could not find an end to the fire   kept burning

and californians hoped rain would come flatten

the flames in its wet spell      be a weather witch      a rain man

make a rain dance

saw it on a satellite map        so much red

eating up green                      a quarter less rain

           then                  some photographer found jesus in the ash

hotels booked for miles                                and kids still wearing same clothes

reach for                   smokeless clothes              from someone else’s back     in paradise

© Amy Louise Wyatt

Paradise Lost - A town destroyed by fire

Amy Louise Wyatt is a poet, lecturer and artist from Bangor, N.I. She has had work published in a range of literary journals and magazines such as The Honest Ulsterman, FourxFour, Dodging the Rain and Cold Coffee Stand. Amy has most recently read her poetry on The BBC Arts Show, at University of Ulster’s Riverside Readings and at festivals throughout Ireland . She is the editor of The Bangor Literary Journal and was shortlisted for the Seamus Heaney Award for New Writing 2018. amylouisewyatt.com

Holiday Workers

8.46am: The fluorescent men arrive early.

Their van is full of boards; they get to work

nailing planks of chip-wood to windows

of houses facing the field in my estate.

Residents turn on bulbs in sudden dark

living rooms; day light boarded off.

For that fifty-foot bonfire will blow up

in flames so long and sharp and hot

that every piece of window glass would

shard like shrapnel; like ball bearings

in an explosion of values; or a bomb

set from within, on a timer at midnight.

At 11.59 pm, there’s an alcoholic rag sent

streaming into the pyre; into wobbling

mass of pallets and my neighbours’

chairs and their chests and their doors.

Then that music plays a thumping beat

and Buckfast bottles glow green against

flames, while people are wobbling

silhouettes against fierce orange landscape.

9.30 am next day: Four fluorescent men

arrive. Double pay on the twelfth.

They get to work, unnail singed boards.

Their van is full of black charred chip-wood

from the windows of houses facing the field

in my estate. The pyre so large, so full of wood

it’s burning still; less fierce, but persistent.

It takes until well after noon to die a death.

On the thirteenth, metal men will come,

They wait until it’s cool enough to touch.

They’ll fill their van with steel. The only thing

that’s strong enough to tolerate a fire like that.

In two weeks’ time, the council send the men

with seeds to scatter and renew the charred

black field. Say fresh green shoots will grow.

Say all is light and new for just another while.

© Amy Louise Wyatt

Eleventh Night bonfires: culture and controversy

Huge bonfires in Ulster mark 12th of July Orange celebrations

Amy Louise Wyatt is a lecturer, poet and artist from Bangor, County Down. She has had work published in a range of established journals and magazines; has read at festivals throughout Ireland and was shortlisted for the Seamus Heaney Award for New Writing 2018.