BLOWTORCH

by Howie Good

The older kids at camp showed us how.

I couldn't always hear
what it was they were saying,

only the grave, conspiratorial tone
in which they said it.

But when the spray from the can
hit the flame of the Bic lighter—

Hiroshima!

I looked around: mountains, a river,
the suggestion of a sun.

And so many things to burn.

About the Author

A journalism professor at the State University of New York at New Paltz, Howie Good is the author of eight poetry chapbooks, including Police and Questions from Right Hand Pointing (2008), Tomorrowland (2008) from Achilles Chapbooks, The Torturer’s Horse (2009) from Recycled Karma Press, and Love Is a UFO (2009) from Pudding House. He has been nominated three times for a Pushcart Prize and twice for the Best of the Net Anthology. Visit him at http://apocalypsemambo.blogspot.com.

Maintained or neglected, familiar or foreign, well-worn or wild, roadways inform our decisions and identities. Their geographies direct the movement
of our lives and sketch the cartography of our stories. In this spirit, 322 Review publishes provocative emerging and established artists whose fiction,
creative nonfiction, poetry, and mixed media artwork wander the paths of human experience. A nonprofit literary journal conceived
and operated by former Rowan University graduate students, 322 Review is based in Southern New Jersey.