FIRE AND ENTRAILS
A rampant fire now fills
your belly. It entered
with a caress. Downy almost.
A little more with each bite.
At first it smelled of apples
and its pulp was juicy.
But in your stomach it shed
its skin, revealed
a hard, burning stone.
And deep in your body
a table was laid
with a slime-coated cloth.
You didn’t feel that either. Christmas
was still on its way, the tree again
decked with sacrificial gold, the last
dithering card dispatched.
And again you balanced
on that ladder, always slightly
too high, up to Christmas, with those
slightly too old bones, in which, what’s more,
the first rusty forks were planted.
