Burning Leaves
Leaf-fires smell like
saddle soap, manure, fresh hay.
Leaf-burning’s illegal now,
but I remember fathers
letting kids tend the weak,
feathery fires in the street.
I rode my bike through
the ash piles to school.
On my fast horse
I rode everywhere.
One of the men at the stable
liked little girls,
the little, little ones
astride the pony’s
knobby spine. Imagine
him passing freely among us,
feeding us sugar cubes, aroused
by our anuses and not-yet-cunts.
