The Mad Poet of the Year blog posts share the poetry of a long-time Mad Poet. This year-long appointment provides readers with a deep dive of the writer’s work and thoughts on poetry. We are thrilled to have Ray Greenblatt serve as the inaugural Mad Poet of the Year for 2021.
THE ICEHOUSE FIRE
by Ray Greenblatt
The entire neighborhood came out
infants in diapers and carriages
aged on canes wrapped in mothy blankets
gambling men rolling craps in their heads
churchgoing women sending up puffs
of gray hope into sodden air
the crowd turned upward dark pools of eyes
waiting for the queen
mother ship to land
challenger to be ko’d by the old champ
somehow in that burning building
was his father’s chronic fury
oldest sister’s terror vented
in the backseat of cars
fists and chipped teeth of the Poplar Street gang
something of the power of trains
which rumbled roared behind their row-house
smashing through serenity
slicing through sensitivity
hid also in the blaze
a cool moon would no longer satisfy
night was crisp with cold
crisp with heat
elemental combustion
fire vs water
while air watched from above
earth from below
rain from fire hoses
fell into the building’s maw
and was absorbed
now the crowd began to focus
on the abandoned icehouse roof sign
beginning to list
as if tantalizing the inferno
leaning down to tweak it
but it was too big for its britches
snaky arms reached up
to curl flaming chains around it
and slowly
letter
by letter
the sign heaved and sank
was the gasp—or—sigh from sign or human
at that the total body
of people grew cold
lost interest
saved by firemen’s hoses
they turned toward home
as a smoky wet dawn emerged
a lingering stink of loss
of what they were not sure
to last for weeks or longer.
Yes, I did have relatives in West Philly. There were gangs and we watched trains passing nearby. Yes, the vacant icehouse did catch fire one street over and did threaten my cousins’ block. But there the reality ends and the characterization takes wing.
Ray Greenblatt has been a poet for forty years and an English teacher longer than that. He was an editor of General Eclectic, a board member of the Philadelphia Writers Conference, and is presently on the staff of the Schuylkill Valley Journal. He has won the Full Moon Poetry Contest, the Mad Poets Annual Contest, and twice won the Anthony Byrne Annual Contest for Irish Poetry sponsored by The Irish Edition. His poetry has been translated into Gaelic, Polish, Greek and Japanese.