According to Ovid, the Hottest Summer on Record

i

If  a Legend from
fell through a Prizm
joyriding Mustangs
Aethon and Phlegon
half of California?
spent in engines
could raise ocean temps
then should we say

Clouds began to smoke
and made therewith so dry
from pastures
Corn combusted
Folk burnt
New deserts arose

ii

Athos, Taurus
Helicon
Haemus
Parnassus, Eryx
Rhodope and its ski trails
Mycale, Cithaeron
the snowcapped Caucasus

All their big game
into the cracks of the earth
where the glaciers trickled down
Jostedalsbreen, Chenega

The nymphs’ hair went up
Boeotia looked for its Dirce
Ephyre for its Pyrene
Meander, Eurotas
The gold in the Tagus melted
the Danube, the Po

The Cyclades became one
stranding dolphins, seals
and cooked on the sands
Reconnoitering birds

Earth’s every volcano
the Moon stunned

iii

Once the Hummer, Explorer
was smited necessarily
the car crashed
there were still those
The bitter father
on whose wild grief
The metamorphosis

His sisters—Phaëthousa
wailed so
weeping amber
For all the restitution paid
they were still condemned
for mourning

It was his cousin Cygnus
who shunned company
haunting retention ponds
intercoastal waterways

the sun’s Blazer
came into Focus
Pyrois, Eous
might it ignite
If all the fossil fuel
in the span of a century
by a degree
we’ve been here before?

Earth flared
the green just disappeared
Leaves, trees were burned clean
Mighty towns roasted
Hardwoods turned to ash
and islands joined.



Timolus, Ida
the Muses’ haunt
Orpheus’s neighborhood
Cynthus, Othrys
Mimas, Dindyma
Scythia’s cold nights
Apennines, Alps.

and small fled
to Hades
Vatnajökull
Chimborazo.

boiled away
Argos for its Amymone
The rivers steamed
Euphrates, Ganges
Nile, Rhine, Rhône
the sovereign Tiber.

as the sea shrank
Bream went belly-up
Medusas desiccated
asphyxiated.

became more so
that the Sun had come between them.



Escalade, whatnot
as explained to the parents
the axle smashed
who lamented the kid
The mother
we cannot linger
of humanity was complete.

Lampetië, et al.—
they turned into leafy poplars
to this day
in amber and in shade
by perfect strangers
their stupid boy.

shied into an “uncouth fowl”
stayed out of the sky
blackwater swamps
cooling his eyes.