Valin Paige
somewhere out in the desert
is a body – murdered & forgotten
buried deep in the yellows &
oranges of New Mexico or Arizona
waiting to be dug up hastily
with a notched shovel that will
scrape against its dry ribs
& gouge out bits of skull
someone will wipe sweat
from their brow & take a quick
drink of water from a dusty
bottle before continuing this
work, eventually pulling teeth
& ribs & good hip tips from
the dry earth – will then smile
see something familiar in all
those bones – something worth
being drawn to in the early morning
hours with a knife or crowbar
& a filthy kind of hunger
there is something magic being
nowhere in the desert with a shovel
something magic about being old
knowing there is a living with terrible
secrets & then this person smiles
rummaging in these memories
& a dead thing that knows, but
perhaps the bones heard of revenge
from the earth, spent years planning
for something good like this
the shoveler watches
the bones begin to shift, thinks it is the wind
at first – then the bones move
faster, turn their sharp bits on
a familiar face, begin to cut in & out
over & over again until there again is
quiet & the yellows & oranges
begin to take everything back down into
the dancing, ecstatic dust
***
Valin Paige is a spoken word poet living in St. Paul, MN. She has a spoken word album titled Bleed Through and is published on Button Poetry. She is currently an MFA student at Hamline University.