[Poetry] There's Smoke by Jared Pearce

There’s smoke

He pointed out the fire

we had just used to cook

was not a real fire because

it was not attached to wood;

rather, this fire was a natural

gas fire. It was not asked

if he agreed charcoal fires

were legitimate or propane

grills or if electric toasters

which fired their way through

acres of bread every morning

were or were not fire.

I liked that definitions were

central, but wondered

how we can look at a thing,

understand its nature,

and then decide it should

or should not be something.

We cleaned our cooking forks

on the flames all the same.

Jared Pearce grew up in California and now lives in Iowa. His poetry collections include Down Their Spears (Cyberwit, 2020) and The Annotated Murder of One (Aubade, 2018). He hosts a website in dire need of updating: https://jaredpearcepoetry.weebly.com.