by Laura Romeyn
The jeep with its soft-top up
shreds past two small girls.
They are rushing the tallgrass
in matching violet nightgowns.
Wisconsin late summer.
Sun going down,
day like a bobbin
so warm. The air drags
low, circles its holdings
drifting there, then back
above. One of the girls,
the smaller one,
she kneels just in front
of the rhododendrons.
She has found something
in the green. A mid-section
undone, scratched open
to loosebelly softened
to the arbor of bone.
Grazed remains.
The lanes of the rib cage
carry their sidemeat,
fixed as the cold
of a silent and empty nave.
Put it in my hand
the older sister says,
and the younger one
reaches down and does.
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