from Drag:  Twenty Short Poems about Smoking.

Originally published in Sentence #6

Forthcoming as a chapbook from Centennial Press

11.

An ashtray is a muddy, fat clam raised in the irrigation ditches of North Carolina.  Pry it open to see the cigarette butts lolling like broken tongues.  Occasionally you’ll find an unlit match head, a tiny green firecracker pearl.