Why don’t you begin by telling me the story.
Denver, on a bus into the city, to either side of the road the fields bare
and wide, wire fences lining them in the wind. Still some snow on the
grass, on the furrows. And over us, over the highway, a clear, light sky.
Where did you find the body? Was there a trail?
My friend saying, go have fun, telling me the way to a party a mile
from the hotel, past the buildings with glass and steel panels. Inside,
Christmas lights strung up on the rafters, red and green, then the
white face of a woman, dark in the gap between her front teeth, cuff of
her fake suede coat brushing my arm.
What did you see first?
Gold ring, name of her husband, her work in the Catskills. She said,
come over here so we can talk, her hand on my knee when we sat down.
I said, yes, it’s hard sometimes, I said, in February we found a man who
died.
Did he have a face?
I said it so she’d keep her hand on my knee longer. She said, you have
sweet hands.
Was the body in parts, or how did you carry it?
By the river in May where we said we’d meet, smell of water at night.
She said, your problem is you think too much. Inside, white sheets, her
sudden pleasure that must have come from somewhere other than me,
as though she carried it around until she needed it.
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Margaree Little’s poems have appeared or are forthcoming in The American Poetry Review, Bloom and Beloit Poetry Journal. She is a recent graduate of the MFA Program for Writers at Warren Wilson College and has worked as an assistant editor in the program’s archival collection of craft lectures. Originally from Rhode Island, she lives in Tucson, Arizona.
