Wheel of Fire Poem by Ishion Hutchinson

They flared on the sea green
of the Subaru that seemed netted
under the unleafing maple,

a limestone moulage cut
from a quarry and cast
in immemorial arrest behind

Pete's Absolute Asphalt truck,
throttling still when I alighted
and said, besides, in Aleppo once —

to nothing but the wind
photographed in sunlight;
the pavement's watery brier

and children and their ghosts
and the air-raid screams of mothers,
once, in Aleppo, altered

that moment in history
when titihihihihi titihihihihi
those white houses,

stiffened with silence, broke
the private change, the public good
to dive into pits of leaves.