Remembering Karen Zentner, 1991

The Hosendale overpass is caged now
over the NY State thruway
Its curved steel mesh protecting us
from the sky over the busy highway

Over the NY State thruway
a boulder was tossed by those teens
from the sky over the busy highway
only they were protected

A Boulder was tossed by those teens
I shiver each time I drive there
Only they were protected
Karen killed in an instant going home

I shiver each time I drive there
I think of  her though I didn’t know her
Karen killed in an instant preparing for marriage
Elsa, who sold her mother eggs, told the story

I don’t forget her though I didn’t know her
on her way back with the wedding dress
Elsa, who sold her mother eggs, told the story
Karen killed in an instant preparing for marriage

On her way back with the wedding dress
she was fun for three killers who didn’t mean it
Karen killed in an instant preparing for marriage
their 52 pound rock smashed her through the windshield

Published Blue Stem Dec. 2016

Tom is dull
He doesn’t know
dirty gasoline can’t clean very well
He washed his grease stained pants
in a plastic pail filled with dregs
from an oil can
You can’t say he was wrong
The pants lost their stains

Perhaps he knew
the results
before wanting our advice
and getting it
like the time he asked
eight times
how to roast a chicken
and gave up
To place it in the oven
and wait two hours
overwhelmed him
He even paid Carol to do it
though he was nearly broke
Perhaps that’s normal behavior
for a man trained to be cooked for

Still, something was wrong
The way he vanished,
made us suspect it wasn’t
simply a matter of low intelligence
We recalled, then, his friend Jack
who never looked you in the eye
as he pumped for information
acting drunker than he was

and Tom’s wide eyed adulation
when he spoke of his hero
a brother who was in jail
Still, we didn’t think it strange
that he lost his job
the day after moving in with us

Like the money he didn’t have to fix his teeth
and how he planned to burglarize a house
so that he’d be sent to prison
“They had good dentists there,” he said

Published Naugatuck Review August 2016