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Joan Colby 
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Fire on the Slope

The mountain was on fire,
red and gold, a pall of smoke
clearing suddenly as a stroke
victim’s apprehension, to invoke
the genius of hell seizing the canopy
pine by pine like damned souls.

We watched from below
waiting the order to evacuate.
The little mining town
built on a scheme of gold
too difficult to extract
in a brief season. The pass
closed most of the year.

Fire descended as if on ropes,
brilliant aerialists swinging
a trapeze of needles. Smoke
homesteaded the foothills.
I was twelve, excited by danger.
Smoke-jumpers, men with axes
setting backfires. Our house
open to conflagration.
I clutched the spaniel.

Days later, embers still bolted
like red animals, but most
of the mountainside was ash
reigned over by witch trees
lifting brimstone hands
to bless us.

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Joan Colby has published widely in journals such as Poetry, Atlanta Review, South Dakota Review, Gargoyle, Pinyon, Little Patuxent Review, Spillway, Midwestern Gothic and others. Her awards include two Illinois Arts Council Literary Awards and an Illinois Arts Council Fellowship in Literature. She has published 18 books including, Selected Poems from FutureCycle Press which received the 2013 FutureCycle Prize and Ribcage from Glass Lyre Press which has been awarded the 2015 Kithara Book Prize. Three of her poems have been featured on Verse Daily and another is among the winners of the 2016 Atlanta Review International Poetry Contest. Her newest books are Carnival which was published by FutureCycle Press in 2016 and The Seven Heavenly Virtues just out from Kelsay Books. Her next book, Her Heartsongs, will be published by Presa Press in 2018. Colby is a senior editor of FutureCycle Press.

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