JOSEPH WOOD
ANATOMY OF A BULLET WOUND
Zipped inside an evidence bag, a wrist
watch
insists there’s a future
of
snow-packed fields, empty
coats,
trampled casings.
The open, upturned eye is meat
promising
black, stagnant water
&
the hole where the other eye would be
so
much blood-crust.
Tape recorders & one word headlines
will
crumble to dust. Thought bubbles
bloat
the family: the gun from behind,
no
perpendicular, no a knife
left on the sill, & his rock-nicked window,
the
bed unmade, sheets in clumps,
&
what was the name
on
that framed baseball card?
House lights snap on. Blink off.
So
goes the street, monument to vespers
of
fizzling phone line, hanging sneakers
encased
in frost
like mastodons, who bowed to drink,
lifted
to yelp—The river reeds trembled.
The
current slowed. Nimbus sunk
&
spread the valley,
which forked & fractured, God’s weak foot.