Stanton
the road around here and around her
around…
we eat through the dust, and i remember before her son where the stone stands.
and Mom has chosen the flowers,
gauzy fake things. i said, ‘it doesn’t matter if it’s supposed to be a rose if it looks like a peony,’
but Mom said, ‘It does.’
emotion is the circle of us here on the grass
softer than a bed,
all standing and saying nothing.
one boundary, beyond the fence—
dead marriage not blood,
they said he wanted to be buried on his land,
and now trees have eaten him, roots in body, bodied roots.
second boundary, beyond the fence—
our land, but it’s not ours; it’s blank field now,
and i’ll never feel these fields the way i should,
but look at the cedars, castoff leaflings felled
by the wind that chains this place of plains.
and at a grave between these two poles of the universe, my uncle says,
‘They buried them in one casket.
There wasn’t enough left to justify two.
Hey, do you remember what Mom said about being there?
Kids shouldn’t see shit like that.’
this town is made of earth and oil and grain,
and there are more graves than people.
my grandmother was a tiny child, and was she even wearing shoes or
holding someone’s hands when she
saw murdered, flamed-up bodies for the first time?
‘They laid them out on a board like two smoked hams.
Kids shouldn’t see shit like that.’
and the wood sorrel grows so huge here, you could weave your shroud from it,
and dragonflies fuck with tandem wings
over the lamb graves.
