Names at Land’s End Tragedy won’t get me with the smoke of the few molassesy Filipino cigarettes I lit in graduate school and snuffed out with pregnancy. But tobacco ate Welch, Orlen, Ray, Hip, Mariana, and Leah. Franz, Harrison, the sweet Door County haiku-gatherer, Norbert Blei. Georgia’s inbreath and cough. Vern in his bacon air, heavy ham of a chair. Good Hugh Duffield’s chains of nicotine tainting his paintings. O’Hara toked all available flavors but his poetry sounds as if there’s nothing to worry about, until the arrow that flieth by day comes out of nowhere. Huff drops his Camel and the whole basement goes up, two lovers burn down, ashes soaked in ashes. Mick my snow-melter, alone in Montana, stardust gone. Paper remains — no sweet driftwood fire on a beach: Berry tills them into his Kentucky field. Page 46 - Nine Mile Magazine
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