Feeling the Burn, or That Which Feels Like a Bargain

by John Dorroh

Fires come in many flavors: Orange Crush
with its fluorescence fogging the bottle
from the inside out, inviting thirsty glass animals
to toss it down their parched gullets, its sugary matrix
of bedroom communities, chemicals that are hard
to pronounce; golden butternut squash with visual
connections to ash leaves on a Colorado mountain side
in mid-September; devil red, complete with obligatory
horns, its sinister smile that confuses all the normal people,
wrapping them in a hot satin cloak, pitchfork optional.

Yours is the Combination #4 with a medium drink
and fries, an upcharge for handmade onions rings
in a beer-batter crust. You know as well as me
that when you mess around with fire, you almost
always get burned.