Cynthia Marie Hoffman (DG 2011) reading

Burning Paper at Lazarus Cemetery

The woman who works in the cemetery in her blue smock

bends to pick a scrap of paper from the earth

and drop it in the barrel as a god would drop

a bird into a sputtering volcano. A white smoke

rises and disappears. All around her,

crosses are popping up like crooked weeds.

Listen to the little river swish

along the walls of the canal. Nearby, a fresh grave

is plump with flowers, a mound like a dozen girls

fainted in their ruffled party skirts. What better place

to be set into the ground? The trees

lower long necks to the water, their many flat faces

nodding at their own reflections. The woman bends.

Another bird is lit afire.