Postmortem Examination on the Body of Clifford Baxter

Clifford Baxter was a former Enron executive who committed suicide.

The body received in blue workout pants,

short-sleeved blue T-shirt, brief-style underwear.

Those unlucky clothes that might have

seen the moon in June.

But they contain a body,

stiff as a canoe.

~

The head is deformed due to the bullet into

the right temporal area.

O to be born a bullet, mute for

most of its life,

One quick explosive motion

                                               and pieces stray away,

search for bodies to embed in,

to make things beyond recognition.

~

An abrasion on the left hand and base of second digit.

How the fingers can never again point—

they are pointless,

permanent in disgrace, no longer able to insist,

to begin a list,

to buttress a kiss.

~

Small shards of glass on a shirt,

but nothing nearby broken.

The ring missing.

The body received without the hands

bagged. Even the dead must be contained.

Earlier a starling sat on a fence,

said nothing.