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.