I hired Arnie to shovel: hurt pride, weathered face
too old for his babyface. He said he can’t never get a break,
he’s always bumping bottom.
But my square-point shovel stands ankle-deep in red clay since
Arnie took his pay, cash, and going home in a rainstorm crossed
into a head-on collision, snapped wrist, bone through flesh.
Oh, Arnie, can you dig? Like those cons at Quentin
whose writing competition I swanned in to judge, two-to-five
for credit card fraud, involuntary manslaughter, DUIs, crossing the line.
They called me Ma’am, fisted red hands at their sides when I told them,
No, they didn’t win.
I’d keep this earthed. But today I found an inmate’s essay:
A long sentence, a solitary cell, a pressed sweater, a rabbi’s visit.
His writing so human and true, my heart swells for his humanity.
Lured into compassion, I look him up. My car crosses
the line into a head-on, my head shatters: He choked and raped
a woman, trapped her in her own bathroom then raped her again.
How dare he write this well, how dare he twist me.
This man, I want his dick
cut off.
Arnie’s gone. I need this digging done. The square-point’s
for scraping surface soil. I use the round-point, the trench.
Red clay in spring isn’t that hard at first.
I stand in a hole, mud splatters and blinds. I dig up
That Guy, buried for decades: Staten Island, jean jacket,
stringy blond hair… Still seventeen, I walked into that house:
window bars, white pebbles, plastic flowers.
His body, tan above and pale below. Red fists.
I flew to the ceiling.
It was too late to say No.
I shovel up those thick officers called in off their beat
who circled me like wolves: “Were you a virgin?” as I sat mute
in a molded chair under harsh lights, refusing to talk, even to
say That Guy’s name. Wearing the hose he ripped.
That Guy, if he still lives, in Staten Island or Provo, Utah,
he’s old: grandkids, football, cigarettes, recliner.
Or, if some other woman spoke: crowded cell, 24-hour lights,
clanging metal, chow lines, chain gang – he’s shoveling, and
planted knee deep in this muddy hole, I still want that fucker dead.
Photo by Lucas van Oort on Unsplash
