Susanna Brougham: “Scald Freeze”
SCALD FREEZE
The harvest field went blue.
Down the furrows, a storm
of soldiers, leaving the green to die.
The fields gave up shapes
of women and men in flight
or bending, crying out,
losing as they
themselves became loss.
Some did scatter faster,
a singe of impulse
away from house-sharding,
from the wreckage of barns
into hiding, a frigid night.
Thoughts of food harshly bright,
imagined bread like
wedges of light falling.
About the living sprung up
buds of terror, berries of ash.
Susanna Brougham has poetry published in Gettysburg Review, Denver Quarterly, Massachusetts Review, Cincinnati Review, Tampa Review, and others. Her writing has also appeared on Poetry Daily.