We cannot lie to angels
when it snows.
The ground turns
black and white.
She sees ink strokes, left-
over paint drowning the canvas below.
Beyond the plastic heap, the incineration
begins. Here comes the music, she says.
She hears trickling.
Glass cracks,
porcelain patterns make their way
beyond the solstice. Their afterlife.
The lid stays behind when paint,
undegradable, melts into loaves of need.
Count the bodies, the angel sings.
Sighing, gasping, lying
in the snow.
By Graciela Zhang
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