Morning Poem
       

Yesterday I asked myself again if life can be corrupted by what you
don't remember. Greg was on the phone waiting for my steel cut oats
to simmer for the minimum half hour, to collapse and dissolve. When
he told someone she likes the oil paint version of oatmeal and I like the
acrylic I thought it might fit into a morning poem that spoke about
the Steins' long-haired trophy cows, how the puny straw-colored cow
had looked like she'd just woken up, the forelock veiling her amber
eyes and clumps of coarse hair stiffening all over her torso into peaks
pointing different directions, whipped-hard egg whites, and me slid-
ing past the field on the way to class comparing the car clock to the
clock on the tape deck to the wristwatch, each set ahead of reality
in varying degrees. On the winding road I tried to remember how
easy it would be to kill someone accidentally and how the time I did
I hadn't been in the car at all and it had been empty, slowly rolling
heavily backward and she much older and perhaps not hearing it at
first, walking away outside as I was reaching for ice cream, for a loaf
of bread. How she hadn't looked dead but only pale and almost naked
as they tried to save her with their bare hands, then with a kit of blade
and sparks, while I watched from a few yards apart as she lay still and
more still and more still.

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Copyright © 2012 Kathleen Winter All rights reserved
from Nostalgia for the Criminal Past
Elixir Press
Reprinted by Verse Daily® with permission