Poetry

Between Wytheville, Virginia
and the North Carolina line,
he meets a wagon headed
where he’s been, seated beside
her parents a dark-eyed girl

As such things go, my reign of terror
felt impressive.

When it was too much, he went out
of the body’s unspeakable suffering. Rose. Stepped away.

Through lace curtains— 
ravens— 
frozen in terror

Red-faced and sweating in autumn
heat, Grandpa and his khaki friend
from town unloaded picks and hammers
off the truck, and took out a case
with dials that seemed a radio
or recording machine with spiral
cord and microphone and needles.

I believe you did not have a happy life.
I believe you were cheated.
I believe your best friends were loneliness and misery,
I believe your busiest enemies were anger and depression.

I didn’t make present
those days he didn’t complain
but I knew he was sick, felt
sick, and a look would pass between us,
a doomed look that nonetheless