A Poem for February

3 a.m. Hot Flash

You know that oven?
The one where sometimes

they say there is a bun?
Without warning,

that oven door busts open
on its rusty hinge

to radiate a dying sun,
a nuclear explosion. Then,

hot needles prick me
along every extremity.

Am I getting a tattoo?
Spontaneous combustion?

Cauterizing heat seeps
and settles in the shoulders,

smolders in the chest,
a super nova of the soul.

An image etched
of an imploding star,

of red hot coals—
the kind you find

when you flip over
the last log in the fire pit,

its ashen underbelly
all aglow within. So pretty,

until that belly is in you.
Fortunately, it’s a dry heat.

There is no sweat, yet.
Maybe later, I’ll be drenched.

For now the burning is enough.
A brief, five-alarm fire storm.

Where are those damn firemen
with their ladders and hose?

Before they come,
the inferno goes, quickly as it came.

I toss the covers, red lava flows,
and I am left without my heat, alone,

extinguished on the bed sheet
seared, cold as burnished bone.

Lisa Vihos