For much of its newfound natural gas richness the United States can thank the horrifying mass extinctions of the Late Devonian period.
—Peter Brannen, The Ends of the World
In the predawn dark, the flame blue as open ocean
awakens under my kettle.
“Humans have always cooked over fire,”
a friend once told me. “It’s primal.” So I burn an ancient,
suffocated sea. The teacup
warms my hands: heat from the making
of a new ghost.