Fire is a Renewable Resource

Ander Monson

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What space is there between a bombing and an ac-
tion painting anyway? I could look it up but don’t.
They both profane slash terraform their landscapes.
From this distance all of it’s as pretty as poppies
blooming. By now maybe like a jury we should be
fury-filled, like porn stars we should all be hung on
hotel walls to provide background for your naked
viewing of CSI: Miami. Look outside: all there is is
CSI: Miami, mami, alone eating Moons Over My
Hammy at Denny’s and regret.
In other revelations: the asscrack of the Starbucks
guy, widening; the tragic conversation happening
behind me about a couple’s air quote-unquote unre-

fires ourselves, assholes all of us who can’t be both-
ered to douse a campfire when we’re done.
Good job not spilling your two Trente-sized
Frappuccinos, woman with a bewildered, clutch-
tucked tiny dog! Good job, Michigan, not catching
fire: you get a merit badge for that! I mean like me
maybe you can steal one from the church and skip
the work involved in earning it.
That you launched the fire balloons in winter
wasn’t super wise, General Sueyoshi Kusaba. You
probably understood this only later, after the sur-
render and the end of war, seeing for the first time
in person Michigan in December: flurries and firs
and frozen lakes and barely-contained anger burn
poorly if at all. Not that our country should be too
proud of how we corralled our citizens or obliter-

alized goals; a woman now sobbing because some-
thing went wrong in the Photoshopping of a wed-
ding photo; the hyperfit and overtan girls a table
over watching videos of firebombs hung from bal-
loons then sent into the atmosphere being streamed
from some server somewhere: it’s a documentary.
Japan launched a thousand in 1944; they’re still ar-
riving, apparently.
We just found one old bomb in Canada two
months ago. Two made it to Michigan, even. The plan
was to start vast forest fires so as to derail American
industry. History says in sum these bombs killed six
Americans: five kids & a pregnant woman—all in
1945. Good job with that, Japan! I toast you with my
Kudos bar at lunch hour at Houghton High, 1989,
before an asshole steals it. We start way more forest

ated cities, but... [the essay trails off, barfs a little,
then resumes] well, obviously that’s shitty. Not be-
havior you encourage in your daughter. I guess the
best that we can spin is this: understating horror
means at least we know enough to have to misun-
derstand it. Actually, the more I think about it the
more I figure all of it deserves the fire: Japan, the
Predator, my country too, the apparition of these
Fry’s shoppers across the parking lot; barnacles on a
wet, black Starbucks.

Ander Monson is the author of nine books, editor of a bunch of literary projects, and director of the Institute of Assessment Matteration, Where Assessment Really Matters, which can be found at assmatters.org. He teaches at the University of Arizona.