The Great Jimmy Hoffa Scavenger Hunt

[Todd]

His voice still ghosts as angry static
over the twisted
pair of copper phone lines. You only see
an empty Green Pontiac,
an open driver’s door.
Yet, the steel drums remain full
of possibility, rusting
sentinels in Jersey City landfills. You imagine
Giants Stadium could frame his bones—
as if he cared for childish pursuits
played by that pussy Bobby Kennedy.

We do not see his tears
bleed from statues,
or his face form in a clump
of mashed potatoes, and mistake him
for Abraham Lincoln, or Jesus,
or David Cassidy—as if any of them ascended
from the parking lot of the Machus Red Fox.

This is no skin-scraping, finger-bone-divining séance.
There is no tap we wait to hear.
If you must look to the dead for guidance,
ask Mary Jo, the drowned girl,
to write her prophecy in the grease
trap drippings scrawling
with her limp finger:

That which is dead
will not remain so.
That which is buried
will rise.

~~~


(I did some slight revisions to what was done in the poetry practice).