Poem for Tuesday, July 29, 2014

The Fire Gods Are Always Hungry

This is not the first thing you will learn there, but when you do
learn, the iron will make you sweat, the blood-heavy organs
will make homes beneath your fingernails like parasites in their
hosts. Someone beside you will be kneeling down; this is
for certain. They will pick up a knife, cradle it in their large hand.
They will thumb the blade into a piece of the stomach and toss it
in the stove where the flames are dancing.

You will begin to learn the hierarchy of the land. You will
deconstruct the grass on which you stand, first by the patch, next
by the blade, next by the cells inside each blade. You will never
forget how things once living grazed there under countless suns,
under countless moons, before they made it into the fire.