Magic Mountain
For months, I head up the brown canyon
to the church school where I teach, drive away
from the one-year apartment, refrigerator,
bartender boyfriend who sleeps until noon
guarded by a pyramid of beer cans.
Above me, movie-star-homes jut out from their ridge
like ships’ prows.
As I turn into the school parking lot, the playground’s asphalt
begins to sizzle;
here, days before start-up, an arsonist’s trick
swallowed dry grass, forks of flames sprang up stilts
balancing six-million-dollar bungalows
before a fire helicopter spewing spray magically appeared—as if
cause and effect were
simultaneous. For months to come, at each day’s end,
I pack young children
into Mercedes, Jaguars; steer my trusty Corolla
back down the hill towards the taut gray string of Ventura Blvd,
slip through a barely permeable orange veil;
until one spring afternoon, the smog
I haven’t known is smog
clears, and mountains bloom
huge, unexpected; a brilliant green reptile—
or insect: it’s a movie set switched on
by sleight of hand,
trumpets,
wake after an earthquake
when the slightest impulse
topples you––head-over-heels––off the balcony of what
once was: “my life.”
Bio:
Priscilla Atkins has a collection, The Café of Our Departure, available from Sibling Rivalry Press. She has lived in various places (California, Hawaii, Indiana) and now resides in Michigan.