The body is not as wrapped.
Wooden, the flowers snap
at the neck. I dug deep in
to the jungle soil to place your
bones. To find them. Even
ceremony is forbidden.
The bodies by the sides–
if we buried them one
by one it would fill the forest.
Before the heat has taken
hold. Too soon. Cold blooded.
The throat slit. The virgin throat
swallowing watches its own
hand. The hand that washes
the rice. The hand that lifts
it to the mouth and reaches
for the other in sleep. In waking.

*

Rebecca Morgan Frank is the author of the poetry collection Little Murders Everywhere (Salmon, 2012), a finalist for the Kate Tufts Discovery Award, and her poems have appeared in Guernica, The Missouri Review, Ploughshares, Crazyhorse, and elsewhere. She is the co-founder and editor-in-chief  of the online magazine Memorious and an assistant professor at the University of Southern Mississippi.