"Living in the Sunrise Apartments"
from Arbor Vitae 4.4
by Robyn Kohlwey
Most weekends, the local teens
hid in stairwells
that festered with curry after stealing CD’s
from the nearby Kmart.
Russian women came home,
lit Marb Reds, the smoke settling
around their faces like the makeup
they sold behind the cosmetics counter.
Summer marked tiki torches,
singed wings of mosquitoes
and bottle rockets that blackened
the grass each Fourth of July.
After dusk, the neighbor’s kids
set fire to the dumpsters.
I watched from the bathroom window,
imagining a lit piece of cardboard
climbing the roof, catching the shingles,
drowning me in a pool of cinder,
a sunrise of smoke.