by Kurt Edward Milberger
Editor's Note: Due to the formatting of this poem, it is best enjoyed on desktop.
###
blades whirring
wind blowing
hands shaking
feet touch down
on familiar ground
Do you recall, Ms. Hindley,
where the body of Keith Bennet
may be found?
I came for the miniatures,
the little glass bottles
of taste and sweet scent,
of memory
and where it leads—
how we collided into each other
his books
my wool cardigan, its
golden label: ELEGANCE
thick tufts of dried grass
spade crunching
into dried earth
limp cardboard box full of photographs
the scarf
stuffed
into her mouth
they called it a folie à deux
our unique madness
that hot desire
that overtook us together
they forgot my tousled Puppet
ambling over
sharp rocks and weeds
fence posts lean
great lengths of sagging
barbed wire
KILBRIDE scratched
on the subject line
of a black marbled composition notebook
too thick to properly fold
his broad-
toothed smile
freckles
her slit throat
hard plastic buttons—smile—
on her downy melton coat,
the
the balaclava wrapped
atop her curly hair
an endless ribbon of white clouds
unspooling across the sky
an
arm bone
sticking out of wet peat
thirteen minutes
a few yards of thin tape
thirteen minutes
of Lesley Ann Downey’s
screaming pleads
the album of our misery
the clear plastic tube
they forced down his throat
to keep
him alive
when he
stopped eating
when he tried to die
before his time
—I always thought mine the worse crime...
I enticed the kids. They would never have
come along if I hadn’t done what I did.
all of this bric-
a-
brac
and
an
empty
heart-
shaped chocolates
box
given
as
a
gift
I’m sorry, I can’t—it’s too hard.
I can’t remember any more than that.
Kurt Edward Milberger writes and lives in Georgia with his family and a goldfish called Sarah. His work has appeared in Litmora and is forthcoming in Moss Puppy Magazine. He is on twitter @kurtmilb.
Comments