Jane Doe

They closed the road through the woods today.
Yellow police ribbons flutter like butterflies
in the late afternoon breeze.

Still dressed in her Mary Janes,
legs scarred plump under a pink 
ruffled dress, the bushes had snatched 
her party hat as smoothly 
as the killer had taken her. 

A fox stealing a chick,
strayed too far from its roost.

Semen leaking into torn panties.
Cigarette burns on her hands.
Flesh crammed under broken nails.
Her body was still cooling when stumbled upon.

What had she thought before, finally, he killed her?
Were her last words a cry for her absent mother 
or did she scream to a passing blackbird, 
plead with it to fly her up into the weeping sky. 

Pris Campbell
©2004
(revised 2008)


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