The Orange Alert

Picture the upturned millipede, dead, and see the streets of Altadena: palm tree rows against the concrete, stiff to the horizon. There have been no birds big enough, we are comforted, to pluck the chitins from before our yards and vanish into the sun like dog-fighting MiGs. War bears litters of similes. Altadena, smog hugs the foothills like mustard gas where our rich peer through their blinds into ravines, Santa Anas sway the mustard plants, yuccas bob, some man—his cigarette, a full gas-can, an itch. We’ve known the orange alert, fires reaching for helicopters like cartoon cats clawing at panicked birds. Yesterday, fire engines and HAZMAT trucks jostled at Alameda and El Molino like beetles eating a four-legged spider. That morning, radios warned of orange. Neighborhood kids watched officers climb in and out an open manhole, consulting the entrails of the great dead millipede. We watched the ground; the sun hotter than all year. The mountains hid Santa Anas, the smog went orange with dusk, the growing shadows of lingering birds.