justice, IL
Maybe the landscape holds them,
water on three sides and the dead
too many to count. A profusion
of clotheslines and baseball diamonds.
How the streetlights dim as the third
shift kicks in.
The waitress at the diner
has no tongue but says enough
with her eyes, her beautiful limbs.
Maybe her dreams are treeless.
Every car wreck a broken cassette
tape rattling in her trunk. Every
ghost expected.
Her husband keeps
a roadkill deer in the freezer,
hits her only when he needs to.
Calls his mother cvet.
The telephone poles have her name
all over them,the foxglove grown
over in the ditch.
