13thWR

JEANNE 1957 -1997

I didn't want the grave digger
to tell me who she was
or how she died

I wanted to imagine her
dying in the arms of
someone else's husband
naked in a car in Highland
Park or pulling down the
garage door, a rejected poet
turning on the radio
going to sleep in a new
shade of black

he told me that she died of cancer
of the lung, suffered like my father
no mystery or murder - no
crashing plane, but someone
loved her hard enough to put :
"Step softly, a dream is buried here"
on the headstone.

I'll bet he knows by now that
real life turns glamour shots to shit

- Dorothy Doyle Mienko