Anna Evans The 2River View, 9.4 (Summer 2005)
Spontaneous Combustion Listen

The words sound like fireworks.
You imagine rockets, catherine wheels,
flames licking the sky.
You think of a colossus,
blackened and crumbling to ash.

The truth is: the tiniest fleck
of sawdust, or fiber of cotton
sometimes implodes
from the knock-kneed pressure
of its hydrogen bonds.

There's nothing to see.

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