PYROTECHNICS

by Martin Elster
 

 
The heavens effervesced with smoke and noise
as spiders, peonies, and palms enthralled
the mobs of men and women, girls and boys,

but shocked the foxes, rabbits, deer, and mauled
the air like ack-ack fire. It spooked the bats
while coons abandoned kits and field mice crawled

down burrows. Even butterflies and gnats
behaved as if huge bolides overhead
were quaking space-time. Humans have their spats,

but this seemed more like war. Some birds dropped dead,
some lost their hearing; dogs were hit by cars
or disappeared, while other creatures bled,

pulled through and lived, disfigured, etched with scars
to face anew this fête beneath the stars.


Martin Elster lives in West Hartford, CT. His poems have appeared in journals including Eye to the Telescope, The Flea, Mindflights, The Speculative Edge, Thema, Victorian Violet Press, and in the anthologies Taking Turns: Sonnets from Eratosphere and New Sun Rising: Stories for Japan. His poetry has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize and a Rhysling Poetry Award.

A TORNADO CHASER

by Martin Elster

Image source: FEMAcontracts

I chase tornados all around the Plains
like a knight-errant looking every day
for fresh adventures. Just can’t stay away.
She’d say that a devoted spouse abstains
from risky trips. I’d tell her I take pains
not to crash my jeep, yet her dismay
hung like a storm cloud when I went to play
and photograph Earth’s mightiest winds and rains.

It’s true folks sometimes lift and whirl like leaves;
yet funnel-hunting’s fun. A thousand suns
are not as grand as watching barley sheaves
rise from a ranch and vanish in a breath.
I think now, as I race one, how she runs
with Ian — safe, monotonous — toward death.


Martin Elster is a composer and serves as percussionist for the Hartford Symphony Orchestra. His poems have appeared in journals including The Centrifugal Eye, The Chimaera, Lucid Rhythms, Mindflights, Scarlet Literary Magazine, Thema, and in the anthologies Taking Turns: Sonnets from Eratosphere, New Sun Rising: Stories for Japan, The 2012 Rhysling Anthology, and Poe Little Thing. Martin’s poem “Microchiroptera” recently took first prize in The Oldie’s 2013 annual bouts-rimés competition. His poetry has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize and a Rhysling Poetry Award.