Ellen LaFleche

AFTER LOOSING HIS ARM AT THE MILL CHICKIE DUBOIS GOES TO WORK AS A GRAVE DIGGER

Chickie likes to groom the gravesite before he digs.
He shaves the lush grass to bone,
washes the earth's skin like a surgical prep.

An hour before the burial
the grave digger falls into a furious
one-armed rhythm,
a kind of manic self love,
his empty sleeve panting like the throat
of a man who is about to come.

His shovel bites earth like an incisor.

Chickie doesn't mind the cellar smell of the hole.
When he licks the dust from his lips,
his tongue savors the grave's
cake-moist blackness.

When the hearse glides quiet
as a stealth missile into the cemetery
Chickie hides behind the willow tree.

Widows do not want to see the gravedigger.

But the gravedigger wants to see them:
factory women in polyester dresses and black
high heels that stab
his well-groomed grass, their faces
stunned bloodless with the swift shock
of amputation.

Ellen LaFleche has published poems in Alehouse, Alligator Juniper, New Millenium Writings, the Ledge, Poetrysuperhighway.com., among many others. Her poem, "JacObY," won second prize in the Paradise Poetry Contest for a poem about joy. The poem celebrates the joy brought to Boston fans by Jacoby Ellsbury, the first Navajo to play major league baseball.