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JEFF GUESS Under the Headlines 1. The Murder Under a dawn frost the old dairy wall crumbles into an exposure of chrome light here her beauty bought only a brief season unlike the wild briar that claimed a longevity until this morning and this frost like old dry barbs in firm young flesh after him who lies in a week’s new proper grave and never lost a night’s sleep for her buried in his past of ninety years now the dark silting of his veins has finally claimed a craven heart as his huge workman’s hands, then – a clasp of thorns about her small soft throat just until the frost fell in her eyes. 1. Yesterday Burning the paddocks against the boxthorn thistle, caltrop and the purple curse there is only smoke now billowing up Bethel’s miles of unmade road as far as the graveyard red and blue lights from the highway patrol flash through hot grey wreaths of stinging oils what might be ghost riders of the salt bush and scrub dismounted now in sickly yellow shapes stand taciturn around the embers of a shrouded problem one stoops into an abyss of acrid fog to what the wild dogs and the wind’s attrition left behind sticks and stones – the disinterred white bones of an old homicide while all the while things are falling through the air and going back to dust.
JEFF GUESS
Under the Headlines
1. The Murder
1. Yesterday
Burning the paddocks against the boxthorn thistle, caltrop and the purple curse there is only smoke now billowing up Bethel’s miles of unmade road as far as the graveyard red and blue lights from the highway patrol flash through hot grey wreaths of stinging oils what might be ghost riders of the salt bush and scrub dismounted now in sickly yellow shapes stand taciturn around the embers of a shrouded problem one stoops into an abyss of acrid fog to what the wild dogs and the wind’s attrition left behind sticks and stones – the disinterred white bones of an old homicide while all the while things are falling through the air and going back to dust.