Did you see that video of _____________ killing that high note? All other _______________’s found dead in a ditch. Yes, he slaughtered. Yes, I’m here for it. __________________ found dead in a ditch after __________________ ended their career. Take your blue dreams by the fistful, and eat them. ________________ looked so good, all other girls were found dead in a ditch. This is so funny, it murders, I’m dying. Is it just me, or is violence built into English? Given our history, why would our tongues not comply? ________________ happens, and all other _______________’s are found dead in a ditch, piled atop each other, flesh blueing and riddled with language. Merely a cradle, the ditch holds them against its maroon dampness, and is silent. It is only a ditch, after all. Ditch, derived from the German “teich” or pond, meaning: a narrow canal dug in the ground and used for drainage alongside a road or edge of a field. All across you, America, vast fields irrigated with human rot, a future draining out from the pigeon-eyed puncture where a bullet passed through. A girl gets in a stranger’s car, and is left in the shallow water of a roadside gutter. The news holds its tongue for how she chose to use her own body, for holding the wrong color within her skin. Rest in piss, bitch, says the human shaped icon in the comments section who is no human really. What, to you, is worthy of mourning? What, to you, is a woman? And another. And another. The ditch spits bodies out. Please don’t clog me with their dying, it begs. Exhumed from wet earth only water was meant to seep: A student, a man, a mother robbed of fingers, teeth and even tattoos. Who will know her now? There is no ________________, no nameless blank space. Truly found in a ditch daily, is me. And it is you. It is you. It is you. It is—

Glass: A Journal of Poetry is published monthly by Glass Poetry Press.
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