Smoking – Mars 2025

An ashtray overfilled.
A dozen impressed, burnt-up cigarettes
and a mushy chewed-out core;
the embers sing sweet apple sonnets.
Echoes of tappuah rise in the air.
Clumps of sugar raked over and
raped with cinders caked
in burnt ash flakes
that caramelize her cries.

Carmen choked up on the smokey cross
of jealousy and refried tobacco leaves
so that I could breathe. I,
seed of the fruit with rib
from its core stripped,
cut down the first tree
and lit it up as she hanged,
then picked the stump,
rolled it between my fingers,
and smothered it in the tray.