The Rape

The world hums. Crickets saw incisive
treble over the roar through trees
of the rush hour river of steel. Above
is a high, unblemished, glacial azure,
perfect skies to loose a rain of fire,
or spangled gods astride the light
descending in a fine haze of gold.

But miracles are scarce around here.
Lately we make do with mysteries:
this morning in the mean little wood
that binds our town, serene against her tree,
they found the torso of a woman. Girl.

China white, unbruised, she bore no
butterflies or random slices, near her
only a curious lack of blood, or limb,
or any violence less meticulously
executed than her cuts, so tidy
through the joints that some said doctor,
some endorsed a butcher round the bend.

Some wondered who she’d been, what she’d done
to get herself stripped like a stolen car,
but she was featureless, a cipher, mute.
Nothing disturbed her. She was that
at which the whole town had come to look.

I wondered at the one who’d put her there,
how a soul so mangled could exist among us
undetected, but even this began to seem
more likely than miraculous. In fact,
the whole scene began to take on
a certain festive domesticity,
began to be a commonplace, a horror.

All of us. The just deserts and pipers paid
sent up a scattered, speculative laughter like
a plague of moths. Even my neighbor, pockets
pregnant with film, dealing his instant closeups
to the citizens. I, watching.