J. D. SCRIMGEOUR
THE TIMES
They could be in a living room
a Sunday morning, the Times strewn
around them, coffee cups. A woman
and man. She, in striped pants,
a blouse, bandana around her neck,
lies on her side. He, seated,
leans forward, face almost hidden
from the photographer’s high angle.
A baseball cap on backwards, tennis shoes.
In his hand, a thin instrument—
it could be a pencil, he could
be doing the crossword if it weren’t
so long: a foot. In her hands, too,
those aren’t knives and forks
slicing omelets, and beneath them,
no glossy wood floor, no shag carpet,
but a rug of bones, skulls.
They are forensic experts digging
through El Salvador’s recent past.
At the man’s feet, a dustpan
waits like a mouth, and between
the couple a large pail, B14
scrawled on it. It seems empty,
hugely empty, from this vantage point—
like the excavated grave, like
the midsummer silence surrounding me
as I sit at the dining room table
reading the Times so late
on a Sunday morning.
