for Marie Petry Heiser
Finally, with pointillistic sensitivity, a DNA
reading has added to the incomplete profile
of your life, what the house of your body still tells. Mandala of mystery identifies
you now. Candle, rock garden, flower arrangement, all that remains
as tribute to how you took in the world as
toddler, school girl, wife, then mother
whose son and daughter were told by their father that you packed up your stuff and left. Yet, who
was the murderer who deposited your nakedness in a ditch, fingered your last pulse, just
more tragedy that if a surveillance camera had been there, it could have packed
up the truth. Today, detectives try to harvest what a genealogy tree stirred up,
quivering petals in the current. For forty years you were a nameless her
with souvenirs fading, blonde strands in the teeth of your hairbrush, stuff
that children hold close like the tender coaxing of tiny fingers into mittens and
a flimsy veil that your sudden leaving, without causality or agency, left.
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Rikki Santer’s poetry has received many honors including five Pushcart and three Ohioana book award nominations as well as a fellowship from the National Endowment for the Humanities. Her next, full-length collection, How to Board a Moving Ship, is forthcoming from Lily Poetry Review Books.
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