DEAD GIRLS

show up often in the movies, facedown

in the weeds beside the highway.

Kids find them by the river, or in the woods,

under leaves, one pink-nailed hand thrust up.

Detectives stand over them in studio apartments

or lift their photos off pianos

in the houses they almost grew up in.

A dead girl can kick a movie into gear

better than a saloon brawl, better

than a factory explosion, just

by lying there. Anyone can play her,

any child off the street

can be hog-tied and dumped from a van

or strangled blue in a kitchen, a bathroom,

an alley, a school. That’s the beauty

of a dead girl. Even a plain one

who feels worthless

as a clod of dirt, broken

by the sorrow of gazing all day

at a fashion magazine,

can be made whole, redeemed

by what she finally can’t help being,

the center of attention, the special,

desirable, dead, dead girl.

--kim addonizio

http://addonizio.home.mindspring.com/