Matthew Brailas

Lot’s Wife Turns Back to Sodom

After Anna Akhmatova

Because the smell is too much like ham.

Because when she tried to save a ladle from the wreck,
the screaming metal kept her palm.

Because she is close enough to feel the heat
paw her dress’s hem
and hear the suck of fire-softened huts
falling into themselves.

Because of the awful trunk she is clutched against
and beyond it the desert, tawny, blister-fat:
the sun nailed to the sky like a lion’s head,
hyena croaking in the jojoba,
touching one another with their teeth.

Because God came down to earth
as a bucket of gasoline

and she is tired
and footsore
and when she reaches for her daughters
she does not find them.

And because an ember
flitting down from the darkness
to light on her shoulder
seems to her now
a moth, touching her with its wing.