They Keep Finding Bodies by My Grandparents’ House

Eve Kenneally

. . . . . —after Rebecca Hazelton’s “Book of Forget” and Sara Morrison’s Boston Globe article

They keep finding bodies by my grandparents’ house, in
the woods where I would carve brick into dirt and never
got lost. Back by noon. Quilts are a comfort—black-and-white
pictures of my tinsel wreath, crooked bangs, smiling half an orange.
Everything white—walls, leotard, tutu. Gold shimmer threaded.
I think I would be found—whatever it is you value,
a springer spaniel sniffing damp earth for bodies underground.
We are the only ones home. The plywood is still dry,
my half-moon feet sliding thin heels. I want to be Snow White,
a slender ballerina. Watch me twirl. They were hoping
you wouldn’t be missed, though you are missing in the same way.
I am an actress. My talent is in never letting my hands grow.
My audiences are always full. Today I am a mermaid
and my show is six acts long. Everyone stays the whole time.
Today you are buried in a knot of wild turkeys, copper sheen,
sexually dimorphic, not as stupid. Flying tundra
swans. Abandoned and still running. Yes, my stories will all be
staged in the children’s room of a public library. If you unearth
a sandal, call it treasure. You have to really make yourself known
but not for ditching third period. You have to really want it—
you have to really want to be found. Didn’t anyone tell you?
There are other ways to spin but I never saw.
There are other ways to remember. This one loosens, still warm.

© Eve Kenneally

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Eve Kenneally is a second-year MFA student at the University of Montana, from Boston by way of DC. Her poems have appeared or are forthcoming in Star 82 Review, baldhip, Madcap Review, Blue Monday Review, Sugared Water, and elsewhere.