TE15 Lithuanian Honey Cake

eight poems

enlargements that spring when I built bonfires in the garden and potatoes pushed sprouts from their eyes, from darkness I shriveled to a glob of sulphur in the matchbox of the god of solitude the gap between apple trees seemed a cracked earth which hordes of ants attempted to breach – sunflower stalks were the bones of unknown beasts and dried out pumpkin skulls clattered one another like coffins hammered shut or bowling pins in the lanes of hell – the wind-sheared willow branches at field’s end appeared to me like the talons of great ravens spread to target the warming carcass of earth’s loam – I gathered these remains – this outstretching world (though we don’t know what expands here or what contracts) and tossed them into the blooming fire’s bush – while white flags of shutters began to flutter and fly -- I shriveled to a glob of sulphur in the matchbox of the god of solitude now nothing is left of me at all only the stars of black firebrands shine in the earth’s mouth _____

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