Victory, Wisconsin near the scene of the Bad Axe massacre

by Bill Edmondson

Is not a town
But commemoration
Of blankety –blank
A few two – story houses
Some trailers    a road
Angling up under white oak
To a tidy cemetery    Baileys mainly
Who no longer live there
Tapped corpses tucked intact
And above these bones    composed
Bouquets propped by the pale

Beyond    for miles outside this plot
Under the constant fallen leaves
Under grass flowing down to the Mississippi
Chips    slivers    fragments of skull    whole bones
Reassemble
The river reverses
Blood rushes back