Wooden poets buoy above the lawn
on knees carved of earth and splintered words,
spitting fire to grave. They ember on
in true pyrrhic fashion, flutter and burn.
Women with lips like peach pits plant coals
under their tongues and lay with palms agape,
effigies in flesh. Your bones shiver and roll
into velvet sky, the living aflame.
Their faces smolder violet and rip seams
beneath their eyes to glimpse Jupiter’s pass
through watered cosmos, and the stars recede
until you become silhouette and ash.
