A CIGARETTE ON THE EDGE OF THE WORLD by Joshua Walker

The match flares like a prophet’s tongue.
Smoke stitches torn banners into the night.
A horse falls out of a poem, limps through the pasture of my skull.
I name him Hunger.
I name him Father.
I name him every man I’ve lost.
The cigarette burns down like a century.
I do not inhale—
it inhales me.
I become a cathedral of ash,
my ribs chiming like pews in a storm.
World, are you watching?
This is the cost:
to sing while the page burns in my hands,
while fire refuses to choose
between prayer
and pyre.

 

Joshua Walker is an independent poet from Oklahoma City, exploring the intersections of memory, desire, and the everyday strange.

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