Money Fire Poem by John W. McEwers

The bakery is open
when it opens
and the customers
like myself
file inside
for early morning
pastries

Croissants do not satisfy.
Wisps of buttery clouds,
stale oven air
encased in brittle skin
crumbling when I touch it
like love.

We are seduced into the banana bread
tricked into eating the apple turnover
by the snake of hunger.
I'll reach into your cupboards
till they
and myself
are bare.

The dusty void
of a vacant home.
The loss from the final spoonful
of ice cream,
with only the milky film remaining,
the decomposed essence
of John
is all that is left
clinging to the walls of my vessel.

In this line of customers,
each humbles himself
to the counter deity
handing out clouds.
My hands stink of death,
sticky with death.

I thumb through my wallet
and the residue of all my previous mornings
are sludge on the bills
the accelerant which burns
everything
but my back fat.