Waking up from a deep slumber, her gaping
mouth spews gray plumes and fire.
She coughs sulfurous clouds, choking
on her own saliva. She is hungry
for earth but she eats the wrong parts.
The cracked plate holds a breakfast of feather and bone.
Biting down with fire-stained teeth, she sings
hallelujah to the tune of ash falling
from sky
from mouth
over doomed earth.
In the melted bone
the burning tip of her cigarette shines
like the face of a fiery god,
pulsating in vacant, moonless sky.
Gray smoke tinged with disaster tumbles
in hot, silent waves save the low rumble of death
and the sudden crackle of spring trees bursting into flame.
Andrea Noelle Brown, a senior English major at Penn State, says she is “lucky enough to be in the BA/MA program where she studies creative writing, primarily poetry.” She is from Seattle, WA and includes a lot of nature imagery from the beautiful Pacific Northwest in her work. She’s especially interested in the spiritual presence of nature, volcanoes, the movements of the earth and fire and discovering how to fit natural landscapes into her writing.