After the Explosion by Laurel Blossom

After the Explosion

by Laurel Blossom

All the water mains burst

Forth, singing

The rats ran

Everywhere, squealing in

Rhyme, and the cockroaches

Tweeted to their neighbors while

Heaven turned itself into Hell on

Earth. From where the sky had been

Each star bored into the ground like an

X-ray so that the

Ploughed fields were pockmarked with

Lozenges of lead, none could smell the

Ozone that sparked from electrical

Systems gone haywire, while

In the meantime, the purple pot stood

On the window sill, holding the

Nasturtiums.

This wonderful poem was published in The Los Angeles Review, online, in June 2018.

So the first thing to note about this poem is that it is an acrostic. If you did not notice, I can give you a little help. Any time a poem has really jagged lines, look for a form. Acrostics and abecedarians in particular often cause the poet to write lines in lengths that are very inconsistent. This acrostic spells out the title, if you read the first word's first letters from start to end. Blossom also provided stanzas where she differentiated the 3 words.

This poem is an imaginative take on a disaster and the poet personifies rats, cockroaches, and stars. Each description is vivid and active; I especially love the rats "squealing in/Rhyme."

In both acrostic and abecedarian poems, trying to find words that bergin with X is often the toughest part. In this poem, Blossom used X-ray, which is often used in these poems, but she did so in a metaphor that is interesting and compelling:

Each star bored into the ground like an

X-ray . . .

"Lozenges of lead" is another phrase in this that I particularly like.

The ending brings a bit of hope. After the explosion, with water, rats, and cockroaches everywhere, the sky crashing down, electrical systems "gone haywire," there still sits on a windowsill some nasturtiums. These are especially beautiful flowers, often bright orange, gold, or yellow.

The description in this poem made me think of the flooding in Grand Forks, ND in 1997. While the city was flooded, a fire broke out in the downtown area, gutting many buildings. Wikipedia has a decent summary of the devastation here and there are many photos online.

I also looked up explosions that occurred in 2018 , thinking that the poet had written this poem in response to a recent news article. There were two major ones in the US that year, prior to June when this poem was published. One destroyed a house in Texas. The other happened at a refinery in Wisconsin. Neither involved flooding.

Of course, Laurel Blossom could have written this poem in 1997, in response to the Grand Forks flood and fire. Or some other horrible incident at any time before June 2018, when the poem was published. Or she may have dreamt it or seen a movie, read a book or saw a news clip from another country, or made it up entirely from her imagination. Maybe she lived through this. Maybe she just saw some flowers on a windowsill while walking in her neighborhood one beautiful day and wondered, "what if . . . ".

Sometimes, we do know what the impetus for a poem is. Most often, we do not. And more often than not, poems freely mix fiction and nonfiction. But this made me think of a specific incident, most likely because I have a connection to that city. It may make everyone else who reads it think of some other disaster. Or no disaster in particular--they may think about the message, that life persists, that even as "Heaven turned itself into Hell on/Earth," hope is still evident, if we look beyond the rats and the cockroaches and the X-ray stars.

Because Blossom does not tell us, in an epigraph, for instance, if this poem refers to a specific event, we are free to make a connection to one. Or none.

You can read more about the poet on her website by clicking here.