“Morningstar” by Kate MacQueen

September 4, 2022Posted by

Kate MacQueen

MORNINGSTAR

Many people call these the dog days. In North Carolina we have our own names for the seasons and we call this one Hell’s Front Porch. Hot and humid August can make a dog inclined to hide under the porch. But that’s not why these are called dog days. The real story is that this is the time of year when Sirius, the Dog Star, first rises with the sun and is then the brightest star in the morning sky. Imagine the dogs with their backs up on an August morning, a little boy held in his grandmother’s embrace, the heat quickly rising, and Lucifer watching from the front porch.
 
that patch of dirt
where everything dies
Hiroshima Day
 

—from Poets Respond
September 4th, 2022

__________

Kate MacQueen: “Things have a way of heating up in August in the Northern Hemisphere. This week it was the Washington Post noting that ‘The largest nuclear power plant in Europe, Zaporizhzhia, lies in southeastern Ukraine. It has been held by Russian forces since March, but amplified fighting over recent weeks has led to an unprecedented fear of a nuclear catastrophe coinciding with a brutal war.’ I guess the fear of ‘a nuclear catastrophe coinciding with a brutal war’ could be described as unprecedented since few people knew they needed to fear such a thing until 8:15 a.m. on August 6, 1945, when a bombardier from North Carolina dropped the first atomic bomb, nicknamed Little Boy, from a plane named for the pilot’s grandmother, Enola Gay, on Hiroshima. History doesn’t repeat itself, exactly, but it does provide inspiration in ways that really should be anticipated.”

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