Poem: Ask the Ghost Roads

For the names of the lynched
For the names of the good old boys
Who shoot up the sign on the spot
Emmett Till was murdered.
About plowed over Indian graves,
Ask the ghost roads about chicken bones,
And spent bullet casings,
About a girl who went out for a walk
And never came home,
About her mother and a can of castor oil,
About pig farmers and homemade sausage,
About empty dressing gowns
And bent hangers
About swollen eyes and sawdust
And the grr of a chainsaw
And the crows.
Ask the ghost roads about trailers
About sumac 
About the same question asked
Over and over until there is only leaf-shudder
And no wind.
About dry dirt spilling from a hand.
About barn burnings and first blooms
About abandon
About the absence of an hour 
About a wife and a wrong word 
And a double wide
Rusting like a coffin 
In the deluge,
Carrying someone 
Over the flood-sheared slope
Into the gorge 
Without a name
Or someone to remember
Another body found in the underbrush
In the spring
And the curve
Named after a dead man
But never a dead woman
We’d have to name every stream Sandra
Name every holler 
Lucille