Poet Sophia Naz’s new book “Open Zero” is full of losses and longing. A.D. In 2017, the author’s home in Glenn Ellen, California, was engulfed in wildfires.
“One can create a landscape that no longer exists as if it were out of thin air,” she says.
She was working late into the night when the Nazis smoked. She looked at her phone for an alarm, and assumed she was safe.
But a few hours later, a fire truck pulled up and the sound on the megaphone told everyone to let go. She woke up her daughter, and the family hurried away.
“It was the last time I saw her and went home,” she says.
Later, her family bought a trailer and returned to the burning property. And sadness began to work in her poems – just like in this ‘after, math’.
Shining where it once stood
where you stand, on scarred earth
scabbed into scrub as if
after many blows a giant
had fallen and through
his maws you saw
the valley yawn wide, felt
something give
as the waters rushed in.
See also Interview with the poet who burned down the house
Credit Reporting ChavoBart Digital Media
