POETRY

The Dead

By Margaree Little     VOLUME 50.3&4

Vertical Divider

We went back, but he wasn’t there.
We went back, and it had become spring.

Cactuses were blooming. And his white head,
it wasn’t there. Other bones, yes,

there were other bones,
there must have been, under the bushes,

under the shale, and Wendy said,
The sheriff didn’t get all of him—

She dug in the shale until I said, Stop.
Then she stopped and rocked back on her heels.

We put red candles on the rocks.
And we left money, for his soul. We left pesos—

the dead can use pesos. We ate oranges
in the shade, and then we drove back

to the city. We slept all evening
in the city and woke when it was dark.






MARGAREE LITTLE’s debut poetry collection, Rest, is forthcoming. Her poems have appeared in American Poetry Review, New England Review, The Missouri Review, The Southern Review, and elsewhere. Her criticism has appeared in American Poetry Review and The Kenyon Review Online. She is currently the 2016-2018 Kenyon Review Fellow in Poetry.

VOLUME 50.3&4