death

Now that I’m dead too, just like the living dead on TV, 
fat chance that the merely living will be saved 
by doing what they did when I was merely living— 
nailing their doors shut against me, 
hurricane-proofing the windows, 
positioning snipers at the embrasures.

Maria and John lost Ned on a Saturday.

A stifling heat—the air heavy—
and all around the loud, wet forest 
knotting the gaps in its own sound.

A peace long earned, then broken;

Only together holding hands in silence can I see what a field has done
to my mother, aunts, and uncles.