The Poetry Marathon

It is time to place the body in. We are about to drop in.

No.

The stanger looks at me. He has traveled far in night.

No.

He does not understand me. He starts to pull it to the hole.

NO.

I pull back.

Some of the material shreds.

No. No.

When she is in the ground. One day I may forget.

No. No.

If I forget who in the world to care?

In the struggle to place the body a finger snaps. Pieces crack.

No one will care about this body, yet I must give it back.

The man, body and stranger arrive to a mesa. They don’t up.

The stranger says this place is just his people’s burial ground. But sacred all the same.

We take our hands to dig. A spot for this body to rest at last. It is a slow duty.

The sand shifts and slides, tumbling back to the hole

We are done at last

The body will live forever in a hole 6’×1’×4′.

Til the flesh rots and the bones eventually rise. Bleached by deaert sun.

The next tim3 someone finds this body she may be 1 whitened skull.

Protruding.

Onyx thoughts.

Traveling by night. Following a stranger. Hoping I do right.

No kin will ever cross a desert to aee a body
Interred in sand and time.

But my onyx mind suggests if I search
For kin
For friends
For love

There will be none to find.

I let this man take us on. The body. Me.

I know when I depart, I can’t truly be free.

I will leave this body in a whole.

I will let the sand and cracks
As the skin peels away.

I will try to tell others of the body.

My onyx mind suggests

They will mumble something about only a whore

Turn back to their garden

And leave me to carry this body

Alone.

Back to the cart.

To meet a final end.

I think about this body. I was never its friend.

This body wantes food. I did what I could to eat.

But a body needs a touch not paid for or on demand.

Bodies need fresh air. Air you can’t get lockwd into the crib.

Bodies need to feel safe. But mine I let be punched, burnt, kicked, forced

Mine bled

Mine leak3d tears

Til it lost its voice.

When a body lives like this, food becomea a choice.

A man came up to speak.
No shirt. Some paint across his face.

The moom shone down and stuck in hos shiny hair. Hair down his back.

He spoke a whisper to the man.

The man whispered back. A child made small.

Once in Colorado I foumd a body laying there. I took that body here so I might understand its life before it is set to the ground.

“Do you now understand”
The stranger wants to know.

The man assents.

Then come with me. Across these hidden paths. I know a sacred place to go.

I am not truly aware as he covers me with sand.

I am just a body. I remotely see. I don’t feel.

Grains slip, a fine miat flowing softly.

Some on what was my eye. Some on the material wrapped tight.

But he does only a handful, another. He stops.

His hands over his face. He cries.

Strange little man. None cried for me in life. Now his tears flow. Beyond.

They would coat the desert but the desert is too vast.

No sound here. No coyote. No wind. No human.

Just a body and a man lost in the waves of soft erasure.

Above the cart was a large empty. No stars. A sliver of moon.

He heard a coyote. The sand no longer scorched. But it thickened. Bound his steps.

The mule stopped. It could not be urged on. So he jumped down.

He pulled the body to the sand.

Why would you carry a body around?
You know her now
You can notify her kin.

Why carry a body around?
Perhaps you engage in sin.

It isn’t. It ain’t right.
You can’t keep that thing there.

Why carry a body?
It must have disease.
It has flies buzzing round.

Let us burn it to the ground.

We will give you a new cart.
Assume you meant for good.

But he took his cart insisting I will bury her as I should.

He push his mule to thw desert. No plan where to go. Her childhood had been 2 months journey away. Colorado, still several days. The body would have to end its journey somewhere in the desert haze.

While he sat reading through her journal, flames licked his eyes.

Outside a group stood round
Pointing at the cart
Gawking at the cart
Whispering about the one exposed eye.

Some spoke of usong their torches to burn the cart, the face, to burn the body to the ground.

He rushed through the door.
He screamed a sxream he couldn’t hear.
Feet touching ground he didn’t feel.

He waved the book of her words.

“Tell the family.”

“Proper burial”

Somewhere through the crowd he heard, “but she is just a whore.”

As I got laid down to sleep
I remember a promise I was to keep

My neighbor Sally fwll in love
15
She anuck out the nights to intwine hands and carve in trees.
At 15 she swore me not to tell.

Corn grew short. Wheat plants died.
No one noticed her swollen breasts and bulging stomach.
Til a baby came. August 15th 1881.

By September Sally was dead in the creek.
Some said her lover crushed her skull. Others said a choive waded her in.

They found the body bloated on the bank – her eyes empty though her limbs be there.

I saw the body lying there.

I couldn’t breathe proper.

I saw the body. I crawled out the new room into the night.

I came to Colorado for a change – but my body had felt the same.

I crawled to feel moonbeams on my face. When I enter the ground it will be dark. I want one last time to see.

See aomething besides the walls come in on me.

I am a body. I lie here. I used to lie under their bodies. They did not keep me warm. I used to bruise under their hands. I had to eat. I did not need to be forced.

Now I am the body. I will rot in the sun. Now. I. Am. The. Body.

At least my sufferings done.