Bodies
We found them rolled together in a sack,
soaked by runoff at the bottom of a grass embankment.
Tossed from a car, no doubt. We peeled them apart
and laid them on a bare log in a skinny roadside copse
to dry. We were nine with little idea of what we beheld;
their pictured parts pierced by familiar appendages made
alien by size. Our mouths gaped like theirs as we stared.
We hid them in the hollow of a rotting stump
and went home to wonder at sisters and neighborhood
girls. All summer, we returned to our moldering hoard
to ogle and ahh and, later, laugh at and fight over
favorites. We were learning like any beasts.
Joseph Landi
Joseph Landi is a medical writer living in New York City. His poems have appeared in North American Review (NAR), The Southern Review, South Carolina Review, Midwest Quarterly, Notre Dame Review, Rhino, Southern Poetry Review, and other journals. His work is also featured in the textbook “Elements of Creative Writing” published by NAR and the University of Northern Iowa.
