Flies

This poem is based on a murder that took place only a few houses up the street from where I lived when I was a child.

Word of the murder moved swiftly up and down my small town street in the humid heat of that July morning before the news crews with their cameras descended like gnats on the neighborhood to capture what they could of the carnage a bloody palm print inside the back door the sheet bearing scarlet stains in which she had wrapped his body after stabbing him thirty two times in his sleep before concealing his corpse in the bedroom closet spread out on the grass as flies gathered like the crowd behind the police tape seduced by the scent of death

Reviews

[willweb]

Kind of creepy, especially being that close, but very cool in how you have presented it. Nicely done.

[AJ Douglas]

This really happened n the small town in Iowa where I grew up. Of course it being a small town in the late 80s a murder was a big deal (even though it seems there were more murders in that town than what was usual for a town of its size over the course of my childhood and teenage years). I was thirteen at the time. She was being abused by her boyfriend she lived with and had a son with and one night I guess she just snapped. She was high on cocaine and stabbed him in his sleep 32 times, wrapped him up in a sheet and stuffed him in the closet then went out bar hopping, leaving their 3 year old son there alone (he was asleep). The next morning when she sobered up she called her parents and told them what she'd done. My younger brother and I walked the half block there and ended up helping one of the local news crews move their equipment around. We saw the bloody handprint and the sheet and was there when they wheeled his body out. It definitely was creepy, especially at that age. When I was in high school and they handed out textbooks in my French class the fist day I discovered I had her old book when I went to write my name in the inside cover.

[willweb]

Wow, the story of the book is something else entirely. Now that is really creepy. What were the chances I wonder. Yep, small town indeed. I as well grew up in a small town in New Jersey but no murders that I can think of.