Area 52

The strangest thing she ever saw was her face

in the polished fender distorted.

The strangest thing I'd ever seen half beneath

the car that would end her

a girl I knew lying in the street

or off a bridge that stranger's body self-tossed

first responders milling when I was 24

or his bullet wound lost

under a wrinkled sheet the victim

on a gurney in a mortuary backroom

or later naked high in winter trees

arms aloft in triumph over a body's doom

the birth of a week-long spirit lingering

by my sick old man hale and preening

or scrubbed and made up him prone

in a chapel his false teeth gleaming

awaiting a greeting from some Beyond.

                                - J. O'Brien