By: Frannie McMillan
Fireworks arc across the sky, but I am fixed
on the plumes of smoke expanding and sliding away.
Spiraling tails of rockets scuttle like anxious sperm
until they burst into a glorious egg, a big bang of life
beginning and ending just as suddenly, embers dying out
as papery ash settles on the crowd, a final scattering,
a tribute I feel thundering down inside my chest.
Later, rum buzzing through my veins, I clutch
against his dense back as he pushes the needle
of his motorcycle’s speedometer higher, my screams
build beneath a borrowed helmet.
We race down a road that ends in water.
I could forget things here, in this place
where blacktop suddenly becomes glass.
Frannie McMillan’s poetry has appeared in Broken Bridge Review, Front Range, Rockhurst Review, and others. She is currently at work on her first chapbook. Frannie enjoys throwing spontaneous dinner parties, exploring historic sites with her husband, and doting on her one-year-old twin sons and sassy three-year-old daughter. She is a National Board Certified secondary librarian in Henrico County, Virginia and a volunteer with Richmond Young Writers.