2 OF 30 Elegy For Ingrid Elizabeth Deardoff

Your pretty dress is a hammer
knocking against the eyes of God.
The sky is a stone. The tiny ants
go about their blind business.
We have sown you,  seed
in the black soil of home.

Concrete angels feign weeping,
deathless and mute, they cannot curse
plastic flowers bloom and bleach in the sun
the shining cars swarm on the black road

Your name is stitched into our tongues,
it should not be a synonym for grief,
the ink of it in your parent's skins
should be a bird, a song, not coal or fire

you cannot laugh
we have washed your long-legged body,
the song of the saints goes on
how do they praise him for this?
this broken circle, shattered kin
o grinning death you sonofabitch

in the hills, in summer
tiny lights flit in the tall grass,
small stars under the trees