Ode to a cigarette
Yasmin Jensen Giménez
The cigarette is a window into the contradictory world of addiction in this work. It is both the ‘fatal associate’ and ‘serene’ and ‘graceful’, a figure of desire and repulsion explored in the voice of free verse.
This cigarette
in a cardboard coffin,
a condemning nail.
To some,
it may
sound deranged,
but
it calls
to me, The Fume.
A fatal associate:
captivating, and yet
the thirst is
never quenched.