Moving the Bodies

I was asked to move the bodies —
there were just two. Left alone in small beds.
Alone already, anyway. Where are we? It’s the same
weather only more still. Same air but thinner.
The roads, grass, trees, facsimile. I do clean the rooms.
I’m busy as a mechanical toy. Effective in spite of myself.
But I’m scared of the bodies, who wouldn’t be?
What’s another word for expectation? I do as I’m told,
or don’t because I forget to move the second body
as if forgetting — a weak dissent. I could go crazy from this work,
moving lonely men, already dead. Sitting up in bed waiting
for nothing. Visible if anyone had bothered, in passing,
to glance inside their window.

ξ

Liane Tyrrel is a visual artist and poet. Her poems are published or forthcoming in Poetry Northwest, Volume Poetry, the Offing, Bear Review, and Four Way Review among others. She lives with her rescued street dog in Concord, New Hampshire.