Front-Page Photograph: Memorial Day
by Maryann Corbett
Do-nothing day. Still-cool morning.
In bare feet on the concrete stoop,
I pick the paper up, uncurl it,
and see: before a grave's white cross,
(a phrase comes to me: prostrate with grief)
a woman lies face down in the grass,
forehead resting on folded arms.
I glance at the caption: fiancé.
And my thinking shifts, and my face warms--
the shoulders bare, the long legs parted:
the last embrace. Should I be seeing
this act of intimacy thwarted,
this woman-six-feet-above position?
Suddenly now I find myself
firing my hard, unanswered questions
at air, while a stubborn cardinal sings
his turf-war song like a car alarm
and flaps the bloody flag of his wings.
from the 2013 collection Credo for the Checkout Line in Winter
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