José Luis Gutiérrez

Fire Sermon

I’ve learned to speak Molotov
for the shatter of everything we know
and hold habitual in our knowing.
The night fires mark foreclosed acres

for miles, attracting a congress of moths.
Profligacy too requires a brand of devotion.
Yesterday I sided with the bankers.
After our tidal consumption of Glenlivet,

steak dinners, orgies and cocaine we ended up
tap dancing straight from the SEC to the ICU.
We now leverage mortgages against corn
and haggle with weather to fill our coffers.

Meanwhile the debt ceiling
bottlerockets to outer space.
The experts soothsay a fiscal cliff looms.
Never argue with experts.

Their list of credentials is often
long enough to stun an elephant.
Tonight the sky is dressed in artificial light.
It’s the Fourth of July.

Soon we’ll all be covered
in a Buddhist monk’s windblown ashes.




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José Luis Gutiérrez is a San Francisco-based poet. His work has appeared in The Cortland Review, Eratio, Margie, Juked, DMQ, among others.