The Punishment Hidden Within Cigarettes It's August, and the clouds stay away. The picnic table chaps while I pick dirt from my fingernails and listen to my sister's coughs. The air carries an electrical buzz tainted with cow scent. Father, judge and jury, forces 20 slow burning Marlboros that brand copper down her thin throat and dye her freckled face blue with smoke.
And then: a bat swarm will come for bugs
the farm will twist into blue-white
and we will file back to grade school
my sister and I -- undercover.