JOSHUA JONES

Fire Chaser

There’s this beetle, innocuous, matte black.
A blandly insectoid pill. Practically the model 
for the dollar store plastic bag of bugs 

you buy a nephew who’s desperate to prank 
a teacher. Melanophila Acuminata
somebody called it because its kids 

eat nothing but the charred dark stubble
a forest fire leaves behind. Part of the jewel 
beetle family. The rough onyx mother 

bezels herself into a charcoal hole
to lay eggs. But first, she’s got to find
a future she can believe in for her brood,

her infrared sensilla drawn not to the brittle, 
blackness her children will hunger for
but the raucous laughter of cataclysm 

that precedes it. She searches with rabid 
abandon. Mistakes are made. Sometimes, 
lured by the promise of abundant food 

for her offspring and a patch of ground
the fire cleared of predators, she will fly 
off after the orange tips of cigarettes 

or thud against oil rig equipment. 
I just flicked one off our rusting barbecue pit, 
and it flew right back. She snuck 

into the fire box before I could reach it. 
I had imagined doing it myself. So I could see
the draw. Like bobbing for apples in a bucket

of napalm, letting a lava flow envelope
my body in pyroclastic pudding, 
or pressing the heat-shimmered surface 

of a skillet to my forehead. Fire, my
inherited cypher for spiritual purity. Hell, 
an inopportune pillar propping up hope.  

Joshua Jones received a Ph.D. in creative writing from the University of North Texas. His poems, reviews, and essays have appeared in journals like Image, Harpur Palate, and Southwest Review among others. He teaches English at Grayson College.