All the Beautiful Bones

All The Beautiful Bones
Leg bones cut off,
returned to the pink
and satin dress shop
in a wood crate,
and she on a blood-stained
stretcher.

The house is surrounded
by pines
and the phone rings unanswered.
Green and brown and gray underfoot.
A woman sits swinging on
the porch with a baby beneath
evergreen tower and shade.

Across the way
city crowds in builds closer
gas stations, mini marts
strip malls, fast food chains.
Street lights clear
the dress shop, drycleaner
within walking distance.

The dark haired, china doll
porcelain doll woman is there
in the shop,
delivered in a crate,
legs shorn off just beneath
the thigh.

Paperback crime novels
have been set in
strategic places for
a scavenger hunt.
Her rose satin dress with
jeweled brooch is tainted,
her ownership to be taken next.

All the beautiful bones are
shaded by tress, spied on
by pastel flowers these
alabaster lengths in a cardboard box,
these loose ends accounted for.

RaeAnn Kime has been published in small college and art magazines and in the online literary journals HalfDrunkMuse, The Bohemian Rag, and The Dead Mule. She tends to submit to journals with titles she likes. Because for what other reason? Judging from where she's been accepted, she is akin to a bohemian, dead-drunk mule.