*
Shira Hoffman (she/her) is a poet living with multiple invisible disabilities. Her poetry is featured in A Thin Slice of Anxiety and Muddy River Poetry Review and is forthcoming from Ibbetson Street Press and the Bagel with the Bards Anthology. After getting her MFA from the New School and working in traditional publishing, she relocated to Sommerville where the air is cleaner, but the people are still weird. Follow her on twitter @ShiraSHoffman for updates.

Spontaneous Combustion

Shira Hoffman

Overheated fat cells, garment friction, methane build up.
It can happen for any reason. Or, so they tell me.

Fires just waiting to emerge, tragedies packed down
could solidify to diamonds or compress to coal

until one spark sends you up in flames.
We go up like a flare, consuming lipids

taking the drapes with us.  We might take
down the whole block, every house a casualty.

What will they say? Now that they can’t blame smoking
in bed or film canisters exploding, erasing the past.

We’ll have to explain why generations
of women keep igniting.

Police wearing booties storm the scene.
The coroner is stumped, as usual.

There is only so long you can ignore us.
They’ll keep marking it down.

Source of fire: unknown.

— Shira Hoffman

__________________________________________
To have your work considered for the Lyrical send it to:
Doug Holder, 25 School St.; Somerville, MA 02143
dougholder@post.harvard.edu