13/30

Spontaneous Combustion

A heap of compost twenty feet high
in a dump called Fresh Kills
ignited from the heat of rot
in its own belly. Why bother

with the butterknife surgery
to excise metaphor from fact?
Consider the dust disturbed
in the seething ripple

of no longer wanted.
No one believes
the dead were sifted out.
A morning can change everything

but burning.