Play With Fire Strike a match. Watch the cardboard curl upon itself before you slowly wave it out. Now, smell that thick swirling smoke— let it warm your nostrils and stick to your tongue, its earthy gunpowder bouquet, lingering. Then, light as that disappearing wisp, place your right hand, gently, upon my thigh. Flared Nostrils I smell like old people when I visit him in this place corralling the sick and dying, like a musty attic wiped with a …
Tag: Smoke
SILLAGE #2: Ambre Narguilé * Poetry + Prose * Jehanne Dubrow
Aromatica Poetica is delighted to present the second in a series called Sillage by Jehanne Dubrow. She is the author of several books of poetry and prose that dance with our heart’s senses, including Taste: A Book of Small Bites, which we highly recommend! Each of the 12 poems are written in the voice of a specific perfume—this one is Ambre Narguilé—and were begun during the height of the pandemic. For this Sillage series, the poems are paired with a …
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“Hotdogs” and Other Poems by Anthony DeGregorio
Hotdogs I smell steamed hotdogs on Hospital Avenue in Danbury Where I’ve never in 10 years seen a truck or wagon Selling the classic Americanized delicacy Within miles of the Avenue’s Hospital where I’m headed On my way to Cardiac Rehab, And I suddenly wonder if this is how time ends? The End Times merely a thick pungency, with the Condensation of existence into a smothering of mustard, Sauerkraut, and onions, the source of the apocalyptic vapor Invisible apparently to …
“Aunt Dottie I Didn’t Do It” * Short Story * David P. Stewart
The following story about watermelon baseball and other dangerously fun childhood activities comes from Cornbread and Lace: The Privileges of a Mississippi Farmboy, which was written by an author with both feet firmly planted in Mississippi. In David’s thought-provoking manuscript, the anguish of racism, classism, bigotry, patriarchy, war, segregation, and revisionist history are mixed with vivid stories about winged snakes, hot donuts, an old farting mule name Kate, and dinner on the ground. Thought-provoking wisdom from a loving grandmother and an …
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Three Poems of Out-of-Season Smells * Rob Lowe
Out of Season Sand and stones and the sea Wind and a hazy view Clouds invading the sky Sea defences below Rocks groynes grey promenade Solitary dog-walkers Crash of winter shingle Emptiness you can smell You search for a tissue Turn up your brown collar You appear as closed up As dead shrimps in their shell Green stink of dry seaweed Litter in the old Dingle Whose muddy path threaded Beside a gunged-up stream Broken shopping trolleys A couple of …
“To My Sense of Smell” * Poetry * Gabriela Iacovano
*This poem was inspired by the recent loss of my sense of smell since I contracted COVID-19.* passed the season in rose-muddied berry-tinted dairy-clotted clouds tiny porcelain-and-steam pillars sweet smoke spirals ancient resins candied orange when id never eat it lathering creamy wintry bubbles carrying honeyed mists crushing petals breaking seeds laying ferns on cakes blooming magic feels your absence in the glitter and fog of my soup pot oily kale on broth swirling sea plant emerald frills golden …
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“Pleasure Pizza” * Fiction * Waleed Ahmad
It was a blistering day. The day would be hotter if it weren’t for the smog in the air softening the harsh desert sun. A cloud of ashes and smoke had seeped in and settled like a blanket over Las Cruces since the border clashes began. And with the smoke came the smell. People called it El Olor. A vaguely fetid odor that permeated everything. People had learned to live with it, shoved it to the back of their minds. …
Three Olfaction Poems by Gerard Sarnat MD
Can You Imagine What a Battlefield Smells Like? Helen’s nascent protuberance & morningsickness mousily besought Uncle to shimmythrough his packed furnace room clutterto sniff for the clue why she wanted to puke. Obliging her face that could launch a thousand ships,I tripped on barbells turning over a discarded radiatorwhich held sweaty exercise gear + a moldy jock —until one sock got caught in some mystery muck. Both light bulbs burned out, my left sock limpedback into the civilization of my …