FIRE COMPLEX

by Kate Garcia

In Mentone the horses wear their coats. Blanketed blue
dew runnels in their manes. Mountain lion sighted

one year and seven months ago it’s right there
on the bulletin. In Mentone an internet café and a blue bar

pushed up against the orange groves – stone house
pulsing light over the wet trunks bobtailed dog

watching over the slick. Highway casting moonlight
golden arrow running straight down the throat

toward the old promises of citrus. Soot stench still
hovers over the basin the soot stench just wet now.

//

When the flames come steady over the tender bench
you collect the housecats get scratched up and down

in the bathtub out the front door – next month
I’ll return the favor drive up into that pink

column of smoke black cobwebs clutch the toyon.
It’s a memory and a harbinger keep the good stuff

in the car until the first rain and then longer. You ask
how to raise a kid when you’re always leaving home—

//

Mountain becomes parking lot becomes impermeable
slip – I knew a family who washed away completely.

The scorch marks still etched into the tree trunks
the scorch marks just wet now.            The rain

opens my mind to art opens my mind to the delicate
timeline of events: after the old fire we made art after

the flood we went to the movies. A family was dead
and we were a family with a dog keeping watch eating

the fruit that was offered. We were a family driving wet serpent
highways up and down up and down catching up with

the barnyard balm of new growth.





Kate Garcia is the author of the chapbook, Bartending for a Stamp with My Face on It (Chestnut Review, 2026). Her poems have appeared in Gulf Coast, Florida Review, Fugue, and elsewhere. She received her MFA from the University of Montana. Kate lives and writes in the Inland Empire of Southern California.