Mother Smoking While Cleaning Her Son's Tombstone

cracked and red her hands
a dutied benediction

for son whose head once
cracked and red and

in her two clamped fingers
a prayer burns

to answers seeding the air
her hymn a raucous hack

and in her other hand
a feather duster flicking

ashes from the earth
cracked and red

mounding soundlessly over him.

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