Slivered bone, hands
over glass, lips smoky.
The oil-slick air, a menu
list of flounder names: sea-sorrowed,
coral-born, for-want-of-tides.
They circumnavigate.
I tell you: four dead today,
gurneys through the school;
heads a puzzle. Pathology
worked till dawn to solve them.
And after, it’s not uncommon
finding chips of bone in pockets.
Bits of us, uncollected. We beg
for neatness: a box of looped hair
a stack of toes. A whole.
It sticks in our throats, the injustice.
