So we sit on the sod and sad waver,
call you John, though you dreams of Henry
& a voice, spoken from the grave of a pauper
wanting drink, wanting
death, waving good-byes from a bridge rail
& landing, not quite,

in the froze water flattening.
-It all comes back to this don't it
Mr. Bones? No cleaner than Pop
with a shotgun, or an overgrown marker.
Who are these women you lay
with? Eileen Dunder?

She crumbles beneath the box elder windfall,
forgotten. They called her "Mother". No flowers
in this section, no headstones. My wife
brings you gooseberries, picked fresh
near the ghetto of dead newborns. It's August
& they taste bitter.

10/02/2006

Author's Note: published in The Ivory Tower

Posted on 10/02/2006
Copyright © 2025 Jim Benz