My poem “the west coast is on fire &” was published in Plainsongs (Winter 2023). I wrote this poem when the West Coast was overwhelmed by wildfire smoke a few years ago and we were saying goodbye to friends who were moving away, exhausted by yearly evacuations. This image was taken in the middle of the day when there were dramatically apocalyptic, dark orange skies, but honestly, days with the “regular” gray smoke were just as bad or worse.